FC Barcelona’s backroom infrastructure heading into 2026-27 has been in a state of considered transition since the end of the most recent campaign, with Hansi Flick losing two trusted assistants from his technical group and the club’s physical preparation staff also requiring reconfiguration. The vacancy left by Julio Tous – reassigned to work with the lower-level academy sides after the season closed – carried particular weight given the injury difficulties that had accumulated across Flick’s early seasons at the club, most acutely felt in the repeated absences of Raphinha. Finding a specialist capable of operating within the German coach’s demanding, high-intensity framework was not a straightforward task, and Barcelona’s decision-making process on backroom appointments has not always aligned neatly with Flick’s preferences.
As Mundo Deportivo has reported, Flick has reached an agreement with Benjamin Kugel to serve as Barcelona’s new physical training coach for the 2026-27 season. Kugel is a German conditioning specialist whose career has taken him through Werder Bremen, the German national team, Salzburg, Cologne, the Israeli national team, PSV Eindhoven, and most recently Benfica, where he held his previous post before the agreement with the Catalans was finalised. Only an official club announcement now remains outstanding.
Kugel’s CV is notable for both its breadth and its depth at international level. He spent seven years embedded with the German national team setup – a tenure that predates Flick’s own time as head coach of the Nationalmannschaft but overlaps with the period in which Flick served as an assistant under Joachim Löw, giving the two men an established working relationship. That shared history inside the German football structure is a meaningful point of reference: Flick knows Kugel’s methods and professional habits at close range, rather than inheriting an unknown quantity.
The appointment carries direct implications for how Barcelona’s pre-season preparation is structured ahead of the July return. Flick’s system places extraordinary physical demands on his squad – double sessions in pre-season, relentless pressing triggers in competitive matches, and GPS-monitored load management throughout the week – and the fitness coaching role is not peripheral to that model but central to it. Kugel steps into a staff that still includes pitch fitness trainers Pepe Conde and Rafa Maldonado alongside strength specialist Germán Fernández, so his function is to add specialist conditioning expertise and sharpen injury-prevention protocols rather than rebuild the department wholesale.
The injury caseload Kugel inherits is not trivial. Raphinha’s recurring physical problems last season illustrated the cost of managing elite attacking players through a congested calendar under Flick’s intensity-first approach, and the squad arriving for pre-season will also include players returning from the World Cup on compressed timelines, complicating the early weeks of preparation. Flick’s individual player meetings this summer will inform how those returns are managed, but the fitness staff will carry the practical burden of sequencing workloads carefully across a squad in partial transition – with Robert Lewandowski’s departure and Anthony Gordon’s arrival reshaping the attacking unit’s physical profile as well as its tactical character.
Hopefully, Kugel’s combination of international pedigree and prior familiarity with Flick’s demands translates into a measurable reduction in the soft-tissue injuries that have periodically undermined Barcelona’s squad depth across the past two seasons.
