Due to injuries, Barcelona had few choices for their starting line-up, but one saw Hansi Flick opt for Eric Garcia over Ronald Araujo. According to ex-Real Madrid player Toni Kroos (via Diario AS<\/a>), this was the wrong decision.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the centre of defence, I don\u2019t understand why Eric Garcia plays over Ronald Araujo. He\u00a0is a little better football-wise, but Araujo has the physical power to chase the opponent more, especially when you defend so high. He would have been the ideal player for that style of play and that opponent.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you have Mbappe and Vinicius in front of you, you need someone who can match that pace. Araujo can do that. I was very surprised by his absence.\u201d<\/p>\n Centre-back is an area where Barcelona have had a number of struggles this season, and according to Kroos, that stems from Inigo Martinez\u2019s departure during the summer.<\/p>\n \u201cI already commented at the time:\u00a0Inigo Martinez was very important. Last year he was the Barcelona centre-back with the best ball output. He wasn\u2019t the fastest, but he was an excellent defender and had a great building game. Against Real Madrid, his absence was noticeable when the team suffered high pressure. They did not replace him and that is taking its toll on them.\u201d<\/p>\n Kroos did acknowledge that Barcelona were without a number of options for El Clasico, includingkey starters.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s fair to say that Barcelona arrived very weakened: from the goalkeeper to the coach. They were also missing key players such as Raphinha, Dani Olmo or Lewandowski.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The post Hansi Flick criticised over El Clasico line-up decisions – “I don’t understand why…”<\/a> appeared first on Football Espa\u00f1a<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Barcelona were disappointing last weekend as they were defeated by Real Madrid in the first El Clasico meeting of the season. For the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3239"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3239"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3243,"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3239\/revisions\/3243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"http:\/\/www.piquant-burotic.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/real-madrid-cf-v-fc-barcelona-laliga-ea-sports-min-7-scaled.jpg\")
Kroos: Barcelona are missing Inigo Martinez<\/h2>\n