Real Madrid come back to life after being “dead” for a week. Cádiz warned them and today Zidane´s squad have returned to the winning track. They are not doing well, but a victory at the Camp Nou is always a turnover point. Pure confidence.
Barça are also going through a bad run and they will make it longer with today´s defeat. The worse news for them is that Koeman´s effect is fading away. The team is coming back to the last season´s lack of secureness defensively and are showing huge struggles in the midfield to create chances apart from when Messi goes down and sends long passes to Jordi Alba looking for the right back´s back. Nothing else.
It is obvious that neither of them are at their highest level, and that will be reflected in the Champions League, but today´s Clásico, which had not brought too many expectations among the fans, left some important details to talk about:
Real Madrid take it serious in important matches:
Real Madrid need motivation from the big games in order to start focused from the beginning. They did not have solid incentives against Cádiz and Shakhtar and so they woke up too late and fell. There is more than enough competitive pressure against Barça, but it is clear that they will loose a lot of points throughout the season, and Atlético and Sevilla must take advantage of it.
Zidane displayed his classic 4-3-3 looking for balance between fast transitions offensively and compact lines defensively. And he pulled it off, but his problem was the right back. Messi realized about it and linked multiple times with Jordi Alba, creating Ansu´s equalizer and several more scoring opportunities. The French coach detected the leak and put Lucas Vázquez in. He fixed it, but just because Barça slowed down in the second half.
Koeman does not care about the names:
The Dutch coach has proved so far that he only puts on the field those players who are doing well, no matter what their names, price, or age are, and that is the right way to coach. For example Griezmann was left on the bench once again and only played the last ten minutes. On the other hand, Ansu and Pedri, who still can´t drive, are earning important roles in the squad: Ansu scored again and Pedri, even though he did not do anything impressive today, showed that he is an active player and knows where to be at depending on what the game demands. The problem is that Barça have a huge lack of creativeness in the midfield and they do not close gaps defensively between the defenders and the midfielders, as Valverde´s goal proved today. They have a lot to improve on.
VAR´S penalty for Real Madrid:
The game seem to be heading to a draw since the start, taking into account their poor run at the moment, Today´s game was almost a matter of finding out who is doing worse, and, despite Madrid´s win, there is not too much difference between both of them. However, Ramos´penalty knocked down Barça and gave confidence to Real Madrid.
The play is a VAR´S penalty, because that would have never been called in the old football. Ramos was not going to reach the ball and Lenglet, too innocent, grabbed his T-Shirt and gave the referee the option to make the call. And he did, just a week after Betis´forward Sanabria got his jersey broken in a similar action and they called a fault on him after reviewing it. The difference is that Ramos did not have the option to head the ball and Sanabria was stopped from shooting it. That is the Spanish referee´s measuring stick.
Everything stays the same:
Madrid´s win will give them some confidence back for sure, but it does not make any difference at all, because they are doing just as bad as last Saturday. However, Barça today have confirmed that they are very far away from their highest level. Because the two biggest clubs in Spain are going through their worse moments in the last decade and they do not seem to improve shortly. That´s where we are right now.
