Hansi Flick's father died on Sunday morning. A few hours later, Flick was in the Camp Nou dugout for the final Clásico of the season, the one that would clinch La Liga. He had told his players before the match. Both sets of players wore black armbands. There was a minute of silence before kickoff.
Then Marcus Rashford curled a free kick into the top corner in the ninth minute, Ferran Torres made it two in the 18th, and Barcelona were La Liga champions for the 29th time.
At the final whistle, his players threw Flick in the air.
"I will never forget this day," he said afterwards. "It was a tough day for me. It's amazing, in this stadium, and also in the Clásico against Real Madrid, to win La Liga."
The football itself was comfortable. Rashford's free kick — struck from outside the box, bending, precise, exactly where Thibaut Courtois wasn't — came before Madrid had settled. Torres' goal arrived nine minutes later from close range after a move involving Fermín López and Dani Olmo that cut through Madrid's defense with a minimum of ceremony. Jude Bellingham had a goal disallowed. That was the closest Real Madrid came. The occasion was competitive. The result was not.
Barcelona lose four league matches all season. This was not going to be the fifth.
The 14-point gap at the top with three games remaining tells you most of what you need to know about how this title was won. It was not won on Sunday — it was confirmed on Sunday. The actual winning happened across nine months of a campaign that lost only four matches and required, in the end, a 2-0 Clásico at Camp Nou as the finishing formality. For the first time since 1932, when Real Madrid clinched their first ever league title following a draw with Barcelona, La Liga was decided by the result of a Clásico. This time it was Barcelona's turn.
It is their second consecutive title, both under Flick. Back-to-back La Liga champions. A victory parade is scheduled for Monday.
Three years ago, Barcelona were a club in institutional distress. The stadium was in pieces. The squad had been assembled on borrowed money and deferred wages. The post-Messi identity was unresolved. Xavi arrived, stabilized things, won a title, then the relationship collapsed and Flick came in from Bayern Munich with a system built on coordinated risk — an extremely high press, precisely drilled, that opponents exploit often enough to keep every match interesting, but that the club's attacking firepower generally renders moot by the time the final whistle goes.
It has worked. Twenty-nine wins from 35 matches played. The Champions League exit to Atlético Madrid in the quarter-finals in April was the season's wound that wouldn't close — Barcelona were the better team across both legs and lost anyway — but domestically, nobody has come close.
"Flick has been very important for us," midfielder Frenkie de Jong said. "He has very clear ideas, but inside there is a lot of freedom for the players. This way we can show our quality."
Pedri, named player of the match, was the clearest evidence of that. Gavi, who spent most of the evening in a running confrontation with Vinícius, was another kind of evidence — the type of player who cannot function in a team that tells him to be someone else.
Flick chose to stay with his squad on Sunday rather than travel home to Germany. He will attend to his family after the parade. The decision was his, made before the match, and the players knew. There is something in the fact that a group of footballers — professionals who have their own superstitions and routines and pressures — managed to play the way they played knowing what their manager was carrying. The black armbands were not the extent of it.
"I'm really proud," Flick said. "This is like a family and they gave everything today."
He was lifted into the air.
Elsewhere, Arsenal survived their own version of a difficult Sunday. Leandro Trossard scored in the 82nd minute to give Arsenal a 1-0 win at West Ham — a match that was becoming uncomfortable until West Ham's Callum Wilson saw a stoppage-time equalizer ruled out by VAR for a foul by Pablo on Raya during the build-up. Arsenal remain five points clear of Manchester City, who beat Brentford 3-0 on Saturday, with two games remaining. City, who have three games left, have a game in hand.
Arsenal face relegated Burnley at home, then Crystal Palace away, a side focused on their Conference League final three days later. City face Crystal Palace at home, then Bournemouth, then Aston Villa. The arithmetic still favors Arsenal. But with City holding that game in hand, Arsenal cannot afford a slip.
West Ham remain in the relegation zone. Tottenham sit two points above them — with a significantly superior goal difference and the same number of games remaining — which means the gap is more comfortable for Spurs than the raw points suggest. For West Ham, the calculation is bleak either way.