Jules Koundé Faces Challenge at Barcelona

Jules Koundé is in a place he does not recognise.

For the first time since Hansi Flick walked through the door, the France international is no longer a near-automatic pick. The right-back slot that once felt nailed down has slipped from his grasp, and with it the comfort of certainty. Now, every session, every drill, every minute on the pitch feels like an audition.

According to Catalan newspaper Sport, Flick has not viewed Koundé as a priority since June. Inside the club, the sporting department were open to listening to offers in the summer, and this time the defender himself was no longer closing the door on a move. A scenario that would have sounded unthinkable not long ago suddenly sat on the table.

The first weeks of the season have underlined that change. Koundé’s level dipped last year and, in recent games, others have simply done better than him at right-back. The hierarchy on that flank has shifted. He knows it. So does everyone else.

Koundé is under no illusions about his form. He accepts he is short of his best and that Flick’s trust has to be earned again, not assumed. What has never been in doubt is his obsession with physical preparation. Those around him describe a player who constantly chases peak condition, even when it means piling extra work on top of what the club already demands.

So when first-team training winds down and his team-mates drift towards the dressing room, Koundé often goes the other way. He stays out on the pitches at the training ground, working with fitness coaches and physiotherapists, Sport reports. While the noise around his future grows, his response is stripped back and old-fashioned: stay, graft, repeat.

The routine is relentless. Extra gym sessions. Longer days at the sports city. More detail, more load, more hours. The answer to a shrinking role, in his mind, is not a public complaint or a pointed comment. It is sweat.

This is not some late-career reinvention. It is who he has always been. Even during the brightest spell of his career, when major European clubs – Manchester City among them – were tracking him closely, Koundé followed the same path: finish the team session, then keep going.

Now, with his status under Flick in question and the possibility of a future away from Barcelona no longer dismissed out of hand, that mentality faces its biggest test. Can work alone drag him back to the front of the queue?