Rodri opens up on the culture shock of joining Barcelona: "Four days of pure physical punishment, I thought, what have I gotten myself into"

Four days of "physical punishment and gym work." That is how Rodri sums up what awaited him the moment he landed at Barcelona, and the anecdote makes clear that the Catalan locker room now runs on a very different playbook than the one he knew by heart at Manchester City.

The midfielder, the club's marquee signing who left Real Madrid waiting at the altar, described in an interview with Cadena COPE what those first days under Hansi Flick were like. And he did not mince words: the German's methods "are nothing like" those of Pep Guardiola, his coach for years at City.

"I remember when I arrived thinking, where have I gotten myself into? I thought I was coming to the Barca of rondos and instead they hit me with four days of physical punishment and gym work. It wasn't normal, I think they wanted to test me a bit. It caught me off guard," Rodri said with a laugh.

The comparison the player himself draws between the two coaches best explains the culture shock. Under Guardiola, physical work came almost exclusively through competition: playing and competing set the rhythm of the season. Under Flick, by contrast, the physical demands are addressed head on and without any sugarcoating, especially for players who joined later because of the World Cup, which was exactly Rodri's situation.

"Guardiola had a philosophy where competition sets your rhythm. Hansi has pushed us hard, especially those of us who arrived later," the midfielder explained, acknowledging the contrast between two very different approaches to preparing a squad.

From initial shock to a starting role

That demanding start kept him out of preseason and out of Barcelona's league opener as well. But the adjustment period did not last long: Rodri made his debut in the second matchday of LaLiga and has since carved out a regular spot, starting in the team's last four league matches.

His arrival, in fact, has been called "key" by Flick himself, who found in the Spaniard the leader he needed in central midfield. It was also a decision that left Real Madrid without one of its top transfer targets.

On Madrid's interest, Rodri did not hide that a move there had been on the table and that the club pursued him seriously: "Madrid showed interest from the very first moment. They behaved impeccably and their approach was all about going after the player. They showed real interest and I'm grateful for that, people close to me passed along how much they wanted me to go there, and that also made my decision harder."

What did bother him was something else entirely: Real Madrid's conduct after the Madrid derby, a match in which, by his own reading, "Atletico was the better side and fully deserved the win." Asked about Madrid's pressure on referees, Rodri did not hold back: "It hurts football. We need to try to avoid that kind of rhetoric. We're human and everyone makes mistakes." He also offered some nuance on specific incidents from that match, while acknowledging the margin for error inherent to such a long season: "Referees can get things wrong, but I don't think mistakes should have a lasting impact over a 38-match league season."