Damage done
Barca win second match against Real in four days
MADRID:
Barcelona won their second Clasico in four days and Real Madrid might have to win the Champions League if Santiago Solari is to be in charge for the next one.
After knocking them out of the Spanish King’s Cup on Wednesday, Barca returned to the Bernabeu for a 1-0 victory that surely eliminates their greatest rivals from the title race too.
Lionel Messi and Sergio Ramos locked heads after Ramos flung an arm into Messi’s face but, despite the scoreline and a few half-chances, that was about the most trouble Real caused.
Messi would have been proud of Ivan Rakitic’s delightful chip, a rare moment of precision that in the end settled another Clasico high on vigour but lacking in either real quality or rhythm.
“What we wanted was to deliver our best and to inflict damage on our rival,” Barca coach Ernesto Valverde said. “We have done that.”
The onus was on Real, not only to make amends for their defeat in midweek but to reduce the ninepoint gap between them and La Liga’s leaders.
Instead, Barcelona extended it to 12 and the way their players jumped up and down in front of the away fans after the final whistle suggested they felt this was a major hurdle overcome.
Barcelona also now own 96 victories in this fixture to Real Madrid’s 95, the first time they have been in front in 87 years.
When Solari took over in November, his team were seven
points adrift of the Catalans and the fact the deficit has almost doubled since might not reflect the improvement in performances.
But this was the first time Real have lost three in a row at home in 15 years and these are surely the matches president Florentino Perez will remember when he considers his coach’s future next summer. “You go through spells, sometimes everything goes for you and sometimes it doesn’t,” said Solari. “In these two games it hasn’t.”
All that realistically remains now
is the Champions League, in which Real will carry a 2-1 lead into tomorrow’s second leg at home to Ajax.
Europe has rescued them before and it also revived Gareth Bale, who endured another frustrating night on only his third start in 10 games.
Bale was largely anonymous again and when substituted in the second half, he departed not just to a scattering of whistles from the home crowd but a chorus.
“He tried, like the rest of the players,” said Solari. — AFP