On one side of El Clasicothere was Kylian Mbappe. There were Vinicius Jr. and Jude Bellingham. There were the reigning European champions, the latest wave of Galácticos, the most feared attack in football, the reason Real Madrid were overwhelming favorites to win La Liga.
And on the other hand, on the Barcelona side, there was no fear.
Instead, there was a daring offside trap that thwarted and frustrated Real Madrid; and in the second half there was Robert Lewandowski.
Lewandowski scored twice in three minutes on Saturday to silence Madrid’s palatial Santiago Bernabéu stadium and open up the first match of the season Classic. Barça’s teenage sensation Lamine Yamal eventually added a third goal. Shortly afterwards, Raphinha achieved a deserved 4-0 victory.
But the game’s story unfolded in a fascinating first half. Time and time again, Real Madrid raced ahead. And time and time again, Mbappé was thwarted by a strategy that, the experts insisted, Barcelona would certainly not employ against the champions.
Under German manager Hansi Flick, Barça has forced their opponents into submission this season. Attackers have been chasing the ball. Defenders have maintained a dangerously high line that limits the space in front of them and tilts the pitch, allowing Barcelona to play 90 frenzied minutes on the front foot.
But if they did that against Mbappé and Vini, the thinking went, with so much space behind them, they would be punished.
“If they play like that, they’re going to concede goal after goal,” ESPN color commentator Steve McManaman warned as Saturday’s match got underway.
However, Barca did not flinch for a moment. They didn’t just “play like that”, they played the high line skillfully. In the first 36 minutes of the match, they caught Real Madrid offside eight times. (Eight! In 36 minutes!) Mbappe has mistimed run after run. Fans at the Bernabéu pumped their arms in anger, but every decision was the right one as Barca’s midfield was active and the defenders were in sync.
In the 30th minute, Mbappé scored, but VAR overturned the goal as he was half a body length away.
Vini broke the fall once, but dragged his shot wide of the near post. And that was officially the only shot Real Madrid managed in the entire first half, as the rest was canceled out by an assistant referee’s flag.
For most of the half, Barca seemed to be skating on proverbial thin ice. But under Flick – who implemented similar styles at the helm of Bayern Munich and the German national team – the Catalan kids have already become comfortable with danger. They have accepted the inherent pitfalls of the strategy. They are convinced that the benefits outweigh the risks. And they have blossomed.
They have created more expected goals (xG) than any other team in Europe’s Big Five leagues by a huge margin. They have now scored 37 goals in eleven La Liga games.
And they have caught opponents offside a whopping 77 times, more than twice as many as any other top team in Spain, England, Germany or Italy.
On Saturday, Mbappé finally managed to beat their fall in the 71st minute. But his shot was saved, and besides, Barca’s impetuous attack had done its work by then. Marc Casadó unlocked Real Madrid with a nice through ball. Lewandowski beat Madrid’s sloppy offside trap for his first of two goals.
His second was a header. Yamal and Raphinha then added the count. Real Madrid felt strangely like the team stunned by a great event. And Barca rose to 30 points with the emphatic win, six points ahead of Madrid at the top of La Liga.
