Barcelona have entered the Hans-Dieter Flick era after announcing him as their new head coach. This comes after a strange turn of events with Xavi. The Spaniard had initially announced that he revoked his decision to leave, only to be sacked by the club nonetheless.
Barca’s officials feel that a change in guard is required to get the Blaugrana competing for major trophies again. In Flick, Barca are getting a highly experienced coach who won it all at Bayern Munich. Indeed, the German gaffer helped Bayern win the European Treble in the 2019-20 season.
Even though his stint as Germany’s head coach was less memorable, Flick’s impressive repertoire at the club level inspired Barca to bring him in. However, the way that Barcelona have presented their new gaffer on their social media accounts have infuriated the majority of fans.
Soon after unveiling Flick with a nice little video, Barca’s social media team went over the top in getting him involved in some more skits. This is being criticized as ‘interaction farming’ where they’re just trying to get more interactions on social media on this appointment in the hope of earning some more social media revenue.
The club posted a strange little video where they describe the body features of Flick. In this video, the German gaffer is made to say ‘I’m looking for a man in football. Trainer, 5’10’, Blue Eyes. Football, trainer, 5’10’, Blue Eyes. Football, trainer, 5’10’, Blue Eyes’.
While saying this, the video features pictures of Flick posing as the new Barca coach and a ridiculously bad attempt at a ‘wink’ from someone who really isn’t tailor-made for such social media content. This strange repetition of Flick’s features while trying to make him look ‘cool’ has spectacularly backfired on the club.
This is actually inspired by a popular ongoing TikTok skit. The TikTok skit began with some girls on TikTok making videos where they inquired, ‘I’m looking for a man. Trust fund. 6’5’. Blue Eyes’.
There have been variations to this, with many girls ‘looking for a man’ on TikTok with blue eyes and similar set of skills or build. However, a lot of fans have actually found this Hansi Flick clip to be extremely cringe-worthy and something that makes a mockery of both Flick as a coach and Barcelona as a major club.
The Barca social media team have been lambasted for coming up with this skit, which serves more to 10-year-old’s or teenagers than to majority of football fans.
A lot of Barcelona fans are themselves ashamed of this cringe-inducing skit and have called for their entire social media team to be punished for coming up with this awful idea.
A lot of the criticism seems to be aimed at Mike Toll – who is Barcelona’s Social Media and Digital Content head and responsible for formulating the ideas for such clips.
Many fans feel like this was probably his idea and that Toll needs to be sacked for making both Flick and the club look silly in front of the whole world. Toll and Barca’s media team are being accused of ‘ruining’ Flick’s aura and making him come off as really foolish by making a manager do these TikTok skits.
To their credit, the Barcelona social media team got what they wanted with that Flick video – as it’s instantly gone viral and gotten everyone talking about it.
But it remains to be seen if the Spanish heavyweights continue to pander to such silly social media skits just for some extra ‘interaction farming’ once they start moving deep into the Hansi Flick era.