A week after suffering a fourth elimination from a European competition in a single year, probably the last thing Barcelona would want is a trip to the home of their fiercest rivals.
Even worse, this evening’s clasico, the Bernabeu leg of Real Madrid and Barca’s Copa del Rey semi-final, coincides with a spate of injuries to their most potent attacking players.
There will be no Ousmane Dembele or Pedri because of injury and almost certainly no Robert Lewandowski, who withdrew from last weekend’s dispiriting 1-0 defeat at Almeria with a thigh problem. That trio have been the club’s three highest scorers so far in a season that has lurched suddenly, since giving away a lead against Manchester United and losing their Europa League qualifying tie, into uncertainty.
Barca remain cushioned at the top of La Liga, but confidence at Camp Nou is notoriously brittle: this is a club that has conspicuously failed in most of its high-stakes matches in the last 18 months.
They have been twice knocked out of the Champions League at the group phase by the combined might of Bayern Munich, Benfica and Inter Milan; they have exited the Europa League to Eintracht Frankfurt and United.
And the recent record in clasicos is ominous. Madrid have won five of the last six staged on Spanish soil, the exception a surprise 4-0 win at the Bernabeu last March when Madrid were already well on their way to wrapping up the Liga title.
Xavi Hernandez, the Barcelona manager, finds himself looking to avoid a run of three successive defeats, an unprecedented sequence in his 74-match period in charge.
But he spoke of tonight’s assignment as “a golden opportunity to win a trophy”. He may find himself saying the same ahead of clasicos again and again in the coming weeks.
The most fabled club fixture in the game will be on frequent repeat between now and early April. After tonight, Madrid, the defending Spanish champions, come to Camp Nou on March 19 in La Liga. Seventeen nights later, they are back there again for the second leg of the Cup semi-final.
At seven points ahead of Madrid in the table, the Liga meeting may well feel decisive for Barca’s pursuit of that prize. Whoever triumphs in the Copa del Rey clasicos, earning the right to meet Athletic Bilbao or Osasuna in the final, will become firm favourites for that trophy.
There is one promising precedent for Xavi. In the middle of January, in Riyadh, Barcelona waltzed to a 3-1 victory over Madrid in the final of the Spanish Super Cup.
An optimistic Xavi can view that as the start of a quartet of clasicos leading to a domestic Treble: Super Cup, Copa del Rey and Liga.
He is an optimist, he insisted. “Doubt only brings negatives with it. You can look at our last two matches and think we’re in the emergency room.
"But you see where we stand – we’re top of La Liga, seven points above second place; we’re out of Europe but we were competitive [United won 4-3 on aggregate]; and we’re in a Cup semi. The script looks good. We’re growing as a team and we aren’t going to focus on the last two games.”
Twelve years ago, Xavi was playing for Barcelona, their vice-captain and midfield strategist-in-chief, when four clasicos were crowded into 17 highly-charged spring days, with a Liga collision at the Bernabeu preceding a Copa del Rey final and two legs of a Champions League semi-final.
Madrid won the domestic knockout, but Barca went on to win the 2010-11 Liga and, eliminating Madrid, to claim the European Cup.
Xavi recalls the era as a glorious one, but the atmosphere around Madrid-Barca matches was horribly toxic. Jose Mourinho was Madrid manager then, Pep Guardiola in charge of Barca, their rivalry increasingly prickly.
As temperatures rose on the pitch and in the press conference auditoriums, Xavi and the Madrid captain Iker Casillas, old friends, spoke on the phone to try to defuse the crackling enmity around the clubs.
“In that period, an unnecessary tension was created,” remembered Xavi. “There’s respect and more fair play now. We mustn't set the bad example of that era.”
Which is not to say Xavi, appointed as Barcelona coach in November 2021, has yet earned himself the same reputation for a calm, measured approach as his opposite number at Madrid, Carlo Ancelotti.
Xavi picked up his fifth yellow card of the league season during the loss at Almeria and will be banned from his technical area for Sunday’s hosting of Valencia.
“I’m a Barcelona fan,” he said before setting off for the Spanish capital, “and I got angry the other day because we were in a position where we could have made things easier for ourselves.”
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