Atletico Madrid moved into second place on Sunday after Koke gave them a 1-0 win away to Betis and are now four points behind Barca in the league table. Two goals from Luis Suarez, one from Neymar and one from Adres Iniesta sealed their 10th El Classico win from previous fifteen meetings between these two clubs.
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Barcelona manager Luis Enrique said his side’s performance would “go down in history” and described Andres Iniesta as “world heritage” after the rout. It’s important to win here, above all, because of the happiness that a win like this creates for our fans.
Bravo saved superbly to keep out Ronaldo’s header and Madrid’s evening went from bad to worse when substitute Isco was sent off for kicking Alba as he ran clear in the closing minutes, allowing Barca to ease to an emphatic victory.
Madrid came flying out of the traps in the second half and Marcelo should have done much better when he fired into the side-netting after running clean through down the left. “In this case the players have enough quality to do better”, he said.
‘I am coach of Castilla and Benitez of the first team. “I congratulate Barcelona, they were very effective today”, Benitez added. We’ve paid for our mistakes. We lost the ball against the opposition.
“The fans know that you can fool a lot of people a lot of the time and a few people all of the time, but you can’t fool everyone all of the time”, writes Relano, whose paper also focuses on the problems faced by coach Rafael Benitez with a project “which was born dead”. We were effective both on attack and on defence. “The result is more of a testament to how well we played, rather than a reflection of Real Madrid being poor”, said the Barcelona coach. Real Madrid did nothing of the sort all night long, and that’s why Barcelona, for now, is king. Now we must turn the page and think about the next game. We talked about improving at half time.
By contrast, Barca boss Luis Enrique couldn’t hide his delight at a brilliant all-round display by the European champions, but agreed with Benitez that the title race is not over yet.
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Lucas Perez scored his eighth goal of the season and third in as many games, before Jonny Castro doubled the lead with a spectacular own-goal late on, after Nolito had earlier missed a penalty.
