On the face of it, there should be no better time to go to Camp Nou and conquer it than this weekend. A clasico against Real Madrid would normally guarantee 90,000-odd screeching and jeering at the visitors. Saturday’s will take place at an empty arena.
Over the last dozen years, Barcelona have more often than not been defending the Spanish title when Madrid come to town. This season Barca hold no trophies at all, after their most barren campaign since 2008.
The trouble is, Real Madrid suddenly look even more fragile than their hosts, and, as of Wednesday evening, have been seized by the feverish alarm that quickly spreads with a clasico on the horizon. Barca may be in a long-term, institutional crisis, but Madrid have had a very bad week indeed.
They lost at home to newly promoted Cadiz. Then came the shambles against Shakhtar Donetsk, featuring what can be reliably described as Madrid's worst 45 minutes in the 28 years since the Champions League came into being.
By half-time, they were trailing 3-0, at home, against a Shakhtar whose squad had been deprived of 10 senior players, most of the absentees out because of positive coronavirus tests.
“We were short in every single department,” said manager Zinedine Zidane after his team pulled back two second-half goals to put a thin layer of make-up on the defeat. “But most importantly we were short of confidence.” It was one of a few damning admissions. Zidane also declared: “I am responsible.”
Confidence evaporates fast in the concentrated calendar of football in the time of pandemic. Madrid’s self-belief was soaring at the beginning of August, when they could congratulate themselves of having mastered the demands of post-lockdown, empty-arena conditions as well as any major club.
They had come out of the sport’s shutdown second in La Liga. Ten matches and 30 points later, they were Spanish champions, having overhauled a brittle Barcelona in the table with a constructive, if sometimes conservative, efficiency. The ten wins on the trot that secured Madrid the title featured only four goals conceded.
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The last clasico
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Real Madrid's Sergio Ramos, right, and Sergio Busquets of Barcelona challenge for a header during the clasico on February 3, 2020. Real won the match 2-0 at the Bernabeu. Reuters -
Real Madrid fans during the match. AFP -
Barcelona's Lionel Messi reacts after fouling Real Madrid defender Marcelo. EPA -
Real Madrid's Brazilian forward Vinicius Junior gives his side the lead. EPA -
Barcelona's Lionel Messi reacts after fouling Real Madrid defender Marcelo. Reuters -
Real Madrid's Sergio Ramos (L) in action against Barcelona's Antoine Griezmann. EPA -
Real Madrid's Brazilian forward Vinicius Junior celebrates after scoring the opening goal against Barcelona. AFP -
Lionel Messi reacts after Barcelona go 1-0 down to Real Madrid. EPA -
Real Madrid's Brazilian forward Vinicius Junior dives over Barcelona's German goalkeeper Marc-Andre Ter Stegen. AFP -
Real Madrid's Spanish defender Sergio Ramos celebrates with fans. AFP -
Real Madrid's Brazilian forward Vinicius Junior celebrates. AFP -
Real Madrid's Brazilian forward Vinicius Junior celebrates. AFP -
Barcelona's Leo Messi in action against Real Madrid's Marcelo (L) and Raphael Varane (R). EPA -
Real Madrid's Dominican forward Mariano Diaz scores his team's second goal. AFP -
Real Madrid's Dominican forward Mariano Diaz scores his team's second goal. EPA -
Real Madrid's Mariano Diaz celebrates scoring their second goal with Dani Carvajal. Reuters -
Barcelona's Argentine forward Lionel Messi reacts as Real Madrid's Spanish defender Sergio Ramos celebrates his team's second goal. AFP -
Real Madrid's Mariano Diaz (C) celebrates. EPA -
Real Madrid's Sergio Ramos celebrates their second goal. Reuters -
Barcelona's Argentine forward Lionel Messi leaves the pitch at the end of the match. AFP
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Skip to the beginning of this campaign, and the same Madrid – they have signed no new senior players, apart from recalling the midfielder Martin Odegaard from his loan at Real Sociedad – are leaky at the back and lacklustre up front. The statistics tell a story of abrupt deterioration: three wins in six matches in 2020-21, and six goals conceded.
Lose at Camp Nou on Saturday and Barcelona would leapfrog Madrid in the table with a game in hand, having started their Liga campaign a week later.
This being Spain, there is already media noise styling this clasico as a make-or-break moment for Zidane’s second spell as head coach, despite the fact he has just won a league title, a title which burnished his astonishing record.
He had never worked as a head coach of any senior team before he took over for the first time in early 2016. By the time he stepped down in May 2018, he had guided Madrid to three Champions League triumphs and won La Liga in 2016-17.
Having been persuaded, in March 2019, to return to the post after two successors, Julen Lopetegui and Santi Solari were dismissed, Zidane set about tackling the most pressing problem to confront the club in almost a decade: how to live without the departed Cristiano Ronaldo.
Ronaldo’s volume of goals could not be replicated, so Madrid tightened up in defence and found another way of winning, in which captain Sergio Ramos assumed the key role. Ramos was Madrid’s leading scorer post-lockdown last season, and in his main job, as colonel of the defence, he was masterly.
Barcelona certainly do not miss Ronaldo being part of Spanish football. But they feared they would be confronting something similar to a post-Ronaldo deficit when Lionel Messi asked to leave in August.
In the event, Barcelona held Messi to his massive buyout clause, and so Messi and new head coach Ronaldo Koeman are obliged to work together to construct from an imperfect but still gifted squad a Barca who can reclaim top spot, at least in Spain.
Koeman’s Barca have already revealed their flaws, having lost to Getafe while Madrid were failing against Cadiz, but a 5-1 win over Ferencvaros on the Champions League’s opening matchday compares very favourably as a warm-up for the clasico with Madrid’s Shambles against Shakhtar.
Significantly Ramos, Madrid’s lodestar, missed that humiliation with a knee problem. Ominously for Zidane, Ramos’s full recovery for the trip to Barcelona is far from guaranteed.
