Barcelona – Real Madrid | Madrid always comes back

Another attitude, another Madrid, another result. Also another Barça, still under construction, still flanked by Messi, with good signs from the future, but far from the imperial era. That one will not return. It was a low profile derby, with fewer stars in credit titles for the devastating effects of the pandemic, to as exciting and equal as most, and resolved by the modernism of the VAR, in a penalty that the referee should have seen when Lenglet enlarged Ramos' shirt two sizes with a stupid grip. There came the goal that changed the lawsuit and that keeps Zidane indestructible at the Camp Nou. As indestructible as the Madrid legend, capable of always coming back.

By half a length, but Madrid was better. Zidane's line-up, with the team collapsed in the two previous games, seemed this time irreproachable, An absolute majority among the fans, perhaps convinced that what he has to rotate with is crying. Regarding the last two classics, there was a midfielder (Isco then, because Modric added his third consecutive substitution in a Classic) and put an end, Asensio, whose conversion into crack accumulates delays, to send him to the front with Benzema and Vinicius, which has become inevitable. A decision as daring as Koeman's, which He sat Griezmann back, asymptomatic galactic. The time to blame their geographic location in the field is over. It neither marks nor shines in any cardinal point. And now there is a technician invested with the highest authority and promises that cannot wait. Pedri and Ansu, in the lead. The first beat the right, the second was like nine, ahead of Messi, hitch in fact, and Coutinho started from the left.

Two starting goals

Before testing the effectiveness of the quartet, Barça found a sudden goal, very much in the Madrid plan, which began by not making a mistake at the start and that he put the knife into the defense of Barça with an unsuspected ease on his first arrival. Benzema, amphibian player, half creator, half finisher, slipped a deep pass between the Barça centrals and Valverde defined at will. Busquets had lost track of him. And with the same simplicity, Barça equaled, in a redundant launch: Messi sent Jordi Alba to space and passed from his death to Ansu Fati, whose relationship with the goal promises to be long. A goal a thousand times seen and a thousand times indefensible. There, in the midfielder, Messi can comfortably settle for five more years. He made Madrid suffer for a while, while he endured his body.

So the game returned to Barça immediately, with the goal as an instrument of reengagement, against a Madrid and less precise at the start. A Barça already clearly moving away from its ideology, less of bolero and more of salsa, without such an enveloping game but better to space. There is also the strength of Madrid, with pitchers (Kroos and Benzema) and sprinters (Valverde, Vinicius and Asensio).

Courtois and Neto

And in that round trip came the minute of glory for the goalkeepers. Messi made Ramos sting in his break but not Courtois with his shot to the near post, where he should not expect it. And in the next counter, Kroos put Benzema in front of Neto, but the Frenchman's shot was a cat and the goal stretched too.

And then again the balance. A Barça that found out that dominating is not a boss and a Madrid that is not at all curled up, with a very different application to that of the sinister precedents and with a Kroos of great maneuver chief. It also had shortcomings. VInicius barely made any progress against a winger, Dest, well within his grasp, and poorly protected himself from Jordi Alba's onslaught. Asensio gave few reliefs to Nacho, who, injured, did not finish the first half. Neither was Barça a watch. His right wing was unproductive, De Jong and Busquets did not raise his bar and he did not seem liberated from his Messide dependence. Each breath of the Argentine lowered the pulse to the team.

The recklessness of Lenglet

From the reflection of the break, Barça drew better conclusions, which opened gas on both bands. Ansu scored on the right, who crossed his shot excessively. On the left, Coutinho escaped, in an unopposed header the center of the very young international, who is already a high position in this Barça. It happened before Lenglet gave Ramos the decisive penalty. Penalty that went to Munera but not to Sánchez Martínez in his bubble. A rude t-shirt grab, too conspicuous to claim self-defense. As clear as the one he got rid of last year when he invited Varane to the same dance. Already in the first half the Frenchman of Barça had played with fire in a similar set against the white captain, which transformed grief. The penalty unleashed in the social networks to directors and culés candidates and also, with more education and professionalism and the same results, to the team in the field.

There he threw himself on Madrid and left himself too far behind. Neto lengthened the outcome with a double stop to Kroos and a third shot at point-blank range by Ramos. Koeman had already filled the lineup with forwards, but so many tanks ended up crashing around the white area. And Modric ended up launching the game with a professorial goal: feint, break and finish off with the outside of the foot, that vice that Benítez ugly. Fortunately then he looked the other way.