{"id":1044995,"date":"2026-09-05T13:34:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T13:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1044995\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T13:34:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T13:34:18","slug":"hansi-flick-gives-his-verdict-on-jules-koundes-current-situation-at-barcelona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1044995\/","title":{"rendered":"Hansi Flick gives his verdict on Jules Kounde\u2019s current situation at Barcelona"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Jules Kounde is trying to regain his spot as an undisputed starter for Barcelona after beginning the season as Eric Garcia\u2019s backup at right-back, and his coach is confident the Frenchman can return to his best.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Hansi Flick spoke to the press on Saturday and was asked about Kounde\u2019s situation, and thinks the full-back is embracing the challenge of fighting for his spot early in the season and will work hard to return to the form that made him one of the top right-backs on the planet in Hansi Flick\u2019s first season.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"duet--article--blockquote _1bij9g72 _1bij9g70 _1mt21p09\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1bij9g79 _1bij9g78 _1mt21p01\">\u201cWhat I can say is that he is a great professional. He is not starting as a starter this season but for him it is a challenge. I know that he can play as a centre-back and that he prefers to play as a full-back because he had a top performance there in our first season. We always think about what\u2019s best for the team, but what I can say is that he\u2019s working hard to get back to his best version.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Kounde is a fantastic all-around full-back when at his best, but we haven\u2019t seen his best consistently for a while. Eric deserves the starting spot for now, but the prospect of a hungry Kounde fully focused on getting back to his top form is good news for Bar\u00e7a.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jules Kounde is trying to regain his spot as an undisputed starter for Barcelona after beginning the season&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1044996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[45],"tags":[2618,221,62,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1044995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-barcelona-team-news","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117218696663656734","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1044995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1044996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1044995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1044995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1044995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}