Luis Figo Praises Barcelona's Dominance Under Hansi Flick

Luis Figo knows what a dominant Barcelona looks like. He spent enough years trying to silence the Camp Nou to recognise the signs when the old rival starts to roar again.

Right now, Hansi Flick’s team is doing exactly that.

Seven games, seven wins. Twenty-one points from twenty-one. Thirty-one goals scored and a six-point cushion over Real Madrid at the top of LaLiga. It is the kind of start that forces even the most entrenched Madridista to nod in approval.

Figo tips his hat to Flick’s Barça

Speaking to Radio MARCA, Figo – now a UEFA adviser but forever linked to the Bernabéu – did not bother with understatement.

“They have started very strong. They're winning, they're playing very well, they're scoring goals,” he said, summing up a Barcelona side that has torn through the opening stretch of the season with a ruthless edge that has been missing in recent years.

This is not just about numbers. It is about authority. Flick’s Barça are not scraping by; they are imposing themselves, pinning teams back, piling up chances. The goal tally tells its own story.

Yet Figo quickly reached for the long view. The table in September is one thing. The table in May is another.

“You have to see how the season goes, which is very long,” he warned, before widening the lens to the league as a whole. “For Spanish football, logically, it is good.”

A dominant Barcelona, a chasing Real Madrid, a title race with weight and tension – the old axis that made LaLiga the global reference point. Figo can see that storyline forming again.

“Surely Madrid will compete until the end”

For all the praise he directed toward the Camp Nou, Figo did not sound remotely resigned about Real Madrid’s prospects. Six points, in his eyes, is a gap, not a sentence.

“Surely Madrid will compete until the end,” he insisted. “This is a competition that has to be regular until May. There will be highs and lows during the season.”

That is where his experience speaks loudest. Titles are not decided on perfect runs in autumn but on how teams survive the inevitable turbulence.

“When there are lows you have to have the maturity and also the quality to overcome them and move on,” he added.

It is a message aimed at both sides of the divide. Barcelona, flying now, will hit a wall at some point. Madrid, already chasing, must be ready to absorb further blows and still stand tall. The season, as Figo keeps repeating, is long.

Ballon d'Or debate? Figo stays on the fence

If his view on LaLiga was clear, his stance on the Ballon d'Or was anything but. With voting closing on Monday, Figo refused to nail his colours to any particular mast.

“Who has the power to decide is the one who votes. You have to wait to see what happens. I don't vote, so I don't have that problem in my head,” he said.

No endorsement, no headline name from him. At least not officially.

One player did break through his diplomatic guard: Kylian Mbappe.

“He is always at a very high level. He's one of the best in the world, to score goals,” Figo concluded, a simple line that underlines the Frenchman’s relentless presence at the top of the game.

Mbappe sits firmly in the conversation, but he is not alone. Lamine Yamal, the Barcelona phenomenon lighting up timelines and terraces, currently leads much of the public buzz. His teammate Rodri, the metronome and big-game specialist, and Bayern Munich’s Harry Kane, a goal machine in Germany, are also firmly in the running.

Barcelona on top of LaLiga. Real Madrid chasing. A Ballon d'Or race with Camp Nou and Bernabéu fingerprints all over it. The season is only just beginning, but the old rivalry is already shaping the narrative again – exactly the way Luis Figo remembers it.