Barcelona end the year with a painful lesson they can learn from

The year has mercifully come to an end for Hansi Flick and Barcelona.

In some ways, it looks like the team is regressing to the mean that we have seen from the Blaugrana over the years, under a variety of coaches. Playing pretty, dominating possession, and still finding a way to not get the result.

Atletico Madrid put in an ugly performance with very little technical quality, but with Diego Simeone, especially when Barcelona is the opponent, you suspect it’s by design.

Because at the end of the day, stats don’t matter in this game.