Real Madrid legend Toni Kroos has publicly questioned whether Barcelona have what it takes to win this season’s Champions League, while singling out 19-year-old Lamine Yamal as the standout talent in European football. The former Real Madrid midfielder used his Einfach mal Luppen podcast, which he hosts with his brother Felix, to spell out why he thinks Barcelona’s attacking approach leaves them too exposed once Europe’s heavier teams turn up in the knockout rounds. It is familiar ground for him; he made the same point on the podcast in late October, warning that when Barcelona’s press stops working, they are left with major problems against balls played in behind.
The latest edition had sharper reference points. Barcelona had just come from behind to beat Atlético Madrid 2-1 at the Riyadh Air Metropolitano on November 8, with Fermín López scoring on either side of half-time and Lamine Yamal supplying the assist for the winning goal. Kroos watched that game closely, and he could not stop talking about one teenager.
“Lamine Yamal’s first 25 minutes were absolutely exceptional,” Kroos said on the podcast.
He described every dangerous Barcelona attack in that opening spell as coming through the 19-year-old, and said Yamal was finding his own space rather than being teed up by teammates. Kroos has been circling this player for a while; in a conversation with La Gazzetta dello Sport last year he said he had never seen anything like Yamal’s level at that age.
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The defender Barcelona do not have
The praise for Yamal sat inside a harder look at Hansi Flick’s squad. Kroos argued that Barcelona lack the kind of elite defender who can be left alone in open space and still trusted to come out on top, pointing to Bayern Munich’s Dayot Upamecano as the type they do not have. The Frenchman had already been on his mind in an earlier episode, when he singled Upamecano out as the defender who has made the biggest leap in Europe this season.
He drew one clear exception at Barcelona. Pau Cubarsí, he said, is comfortably Flick’s best defender, capable of winning individual duels and recovering ground on quicker opponents. Cubarsí had been confirmed as the 2026 Golden Boy winner a few days before the podcast was recorded.
Possession is not enough
Kroos’s wider verdict was about the kind of nights the Champions League produces. In a competition where opponents can score several goals in a single game and also defend well enough to shut down a side’s usual game, he said, you have to know how to defend yourself. Barcelona’s possession-first style, in his reading, does not solve that problem on the evenings that decide the trophy.
Flick’s side sit top of La Liga after the win in Madrid. Their next Champions League fixture takes them to Baku to play Sabah FK on November 25, the kind of league-phase date on which Kroos’s verdict will not yet be tested.
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