It could have been 4-1 but no, 4-0.
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Real Madrid did nothing of the sort all night long, and that’s why Barcelona, for now, is king. Now, that’s not to say Real Madrid is out of the title race.
And Barca should have made it five as injury time approached.
They’d coped fairly well with that in the Argentine’s absence, netting every single one of Barcelona’s 17 league goals since Leo had been taken off against Las Palmas in September. Subbed for Dani Carvajal 59 minutes in after suffering a knock.
But he revealed: “I decided it during the week and I wanted to get feedback from him”.
“It was a complete game from us”.
Gareth Bale – 5/10: Deployed through the middle once more by Benitez, the Welshman’s influence on the game was marginal. In the second half he missed a series of opportunities that seemed to go begging for lack of form as opposed to anything else.
Another scorer on the day was Andres Iniesta, his goal broke quite a few runs as his goal marked the first time in the last 20 goals for Barcelona that anyone other than Neymar or Suarez has scored.
Karim Benzema – 4/10: Invisible.
“Winning like this against players of such a high level is hard, but we managed to pull off what we were hoping to do throughout the game”.
It was the team’s worst display in years. Like Bale, he didn’t look able to find his footing in the game.
Sergi Roberto made a powerful towards the heart of the Madrid defence before playing in Suarez, who clinically curled his shot past Keylor Navas with the outside of his right boot.
Mourinho, disgracefully, poked his finger into the eye of Barca assistant Tito Vilanova, for which he was given a two-match ban, and the game ended with two more red cards shown to David Villa and Mesut Ozil, both of whom were not even on the pitch!
Barca has a slim three-point lead over Madrid in the La Liga standings, and another “El Clasico” win would give the Catalan club a huge advantage in its quest for back-to-back Spanish first division championships.
Bravo stopped all of Real Madrid’s seven shots on target. Before that game, there was not a great rivalry between the two teams, but what followed made sure there would always remain one.
Barca secured the result with a 53rd minute blast into the top corner by Iniesta, assisted by Neymar with a gorgeous first-touch backheel flick.
Suarez and Neymar, meanwhile, continued to improve on their incredible scoring streak – the South American duo has scored 23 of the team’s 27 goals since Messi got injured.
Andres Iniesta finished off a fine team move to add a third after the break. Real Madrid will win nothing under Rafael Benitez.
Messi wasn’t on the scoresheet, but the star forward intelligently connected with Neymar to play Suarez through on goal before the Uruguay global chipped the ball past Navas once again to make it 4-0. By the final whistle, he had created six chances and taken four shots to punish Benitez’s underwhelming Real Madrid side.
DF Jeremy Mathieu, 7 – On earlier than expected due to Mascherano’s injury after just 27 minutes.
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FW Lionel Messi, 8 – He replaced Rakitic after 56 minutes.
