Barcelona spent the summer building around one name, and that name will not be on the team sheet when the season actually starts. Flick has confirmed his big midfield addition is unavailable for the trip to Elche, which means the opener nobody was supposed to worry about just became a real test of squad depth before a ball is even kicked.
Elche at home in round one is exactly the kind of fixture a superpower is expected to handle without blinking. But every new signing changes how a team is supposed to look, and Barcelona now has to open the season looking like their old selves instead of their upgraded ones. That gap between the roster on paper and the eleven actually walking out is the whole story here.
Nobody doubts what this Barcelona squad becomes once everyone is fit and eligible. The question is what happens before that, starting now, in a stadium where anything less than a win would follow them into the rest of August. Do they get the job done at Elche without him, or does the biggest man of their summer get missed on day one?