Even though the match looked like a draw.
Real Madrid hasn’t woken up
The content of the first half depends entirely on Barcelona. The Catalans, who had not yet lost this season, looked fresher, happier and more dynamic than the Madrid team. The agile Vinicius managed to make isolated breakthroughs, but the rest of the Real Madrid representatives looked very pale: they were repressed by the pressure of Xavi’s accusations. Particular attention was focused on Bellingham, who is tearing up La Liga at the start of the season. Jude wasn’t allowed to breathe. Gavi made maximum effort for this, trying to be on time everywhere.
But all this superiority of Barcelona was visible after the goal. It was very fast. And it arises from misunderstandings in Real Madrid’s defense. It all started with an insignificant “wall” in front of Real Madrid’s penalty area. Gundogan passed to Torres and should have been answered. But Tchuameni puts his foot down and the ball bounces into the penalty area. Furthermore, it seemed that there was nothing dangerous, given that there were enough Real players in this area.
Yet none of them rushed to the dance. Alaba, who was at a distance, reacted and noticed that Gundogan had picked up speed and could potentially go one-on-one. But David only played alongside his opponent in this surreal story. The ball after his tackle went to Ilkay and he tackled the goalkeeper. While this goal in itself seemed curious, Barcelona’s lead in scoring follows the logic of the first half. It created other more noticeable moments, but they didn’t become productive. Consider Fermin Lopez hitting the post. The Rolling Stones guests in the stands were clearly pleased with the weather.
The awakening of Real Madrid
Carlo Ancelotti actively took action to correct the situation at the start of the second half. He began his reconstruction by inserting the more versatile Camavinga in place of the simple Mendy. Among other things, perhaps I didn’t make it in time, because perhaps a key episode happened right before this substitution with the missed opportunity for Barcelona to take the lead. Inigo Martinez hits the post and Araujo’s shot is saved by Kepa.
After this episode, Real only developed its initiative, and Barcelona’s activity began to decline, flaring up only sporadically after the replacement of Xavi and the exit of Lewandowski and Yamal. At the same time Ancelotti took some risks with Camavinga’s exit. This immediately caught my attention. Eduardo constantly moved to the center and remained in attack, which Mendy did not do. Yes, this allowed Madrid to create an advantage in some areas of the pitch, but it exposed the wing for Cancelo to play. He did this in a very dangerous way several times. Alaba, who was supposed to provide insurance for Camavinga, generally gets away with it, but with better luck Joao could have punished Real for this substitution.
Another turning point could be the tiredness of some Barcelona players. In particular Gavi. He did a colossal job in the first part of the game, he was on time everywhere. But this comes at a price. In the second part of the match, Real already had more space and dynamism than the Catalans. Take Real Madrid’s first goal. Of course, there is pure skill in the magnificent Bellingham’s long-range shooting. But first it was Gavi who didn’t give him freedom, but now he’s loosened up a bit. By the way, the ball bounced to Jude from Gavi, who stopped the pass in the penalty area.
The fresh players released by Xavi are still trying to organize something, but the team seems to have lost its balance. However, Real Madrid also made losses and mistakes. This gave a bit of “madness” to the pitch, but Real remained more monolithic. The end of the match was open and it looked like it was heading towards a draw. Which could be a natural outcome. Such “drawn” matches often turn out to be victorious for the team that has a lucky master. And Real Madrid had a similar one.
Furthermore, the situation was not directly favorable to the goal. Carvajal threw a cross on serve, and Modric didn’t try very well to stop the ball, but it bounced so well that it flew exactly over the head of Martinez, who was covering Bellingham, and fell on Jude’s foot. Then it’s a question of technology, of which English is not deprived.
The debut “clásico” proved to be a triumph for Bellingham, who has already scored 12 goals in his first 13 games for Real and continues to consolidate his position as a superstar, while at the same time putting to shame those who began argue that Jude only scores against weak opponents. There was logic in this reasoning, because Bellingham did not score against Atlético, Real Sociedad and Sevilla. But now he has removed all doubts by inflicting Barcelona’s first defeat of the season.
Madrid are now leaders in La Liga, level on points with sensational Girona, but ahead of them in additional indicators. And Barcelona’s gap from the leaders has reached four points.
Judge
Usually, after the Clasico, the most attention is paid to the refereeing. There will probably be those who will present something to Jesus Gil Manzano even now. But overall it worked safely and without incidents that could cause obvious complaints. Maybe he didn’t give enough yellow cards somewhere, but that was the acceptable level of severity, he had set it from the start. There were also falls in the penalty area, on both sides, at the end of the first half and the beginning of the second. If you are fussy you could also think about a penalty. But we can also accept that these episodes “cancelled” each other. By the way, VAR wasn’t even activated in this match.
Although the game turned out to be so dynamic that Manzano added little time in an atypical way. In the first half – only one minute, in the second – four. Well, it turned out to be something more, taking into account the goal already in injury time. And that’s when La Liga is the second league in Europe in terms of average injury time: more than 12 minutes. The Portuguese championship is a leader in this sense.
