How Barcelona can make Clásico history and cap off Real Madrid’s nightmare week
A foul season for real Madrid could be about to get a lot, a lot worse. A calamitous 2025-26 has already seen Madrid lose a coach in Xabi Alonso, crash out of the King’s Cupexit the UEFA Champions League within the quarterfinals and undergo a string of LaLiga losses which have left them trailing leaders Barcelonaand dealing with a trophyless season for the second 12 months in a row.
In simply the final week, Madrid have been hit by a collection of behind-the-scenes scandals: An injured Kylian Mbappé took an ill-advised midseason vacation, particulars emerged of a dressing room bust-up between Antonio Rudiger and Alvaro Carrerasand vice-captain Federico Valverde was taken to hospital with a concussion after a confrontation with Aurélien Tchouaméni.
Now, Barcelona has the possibility to twist the knife on Sunday’s Classic (LIVE at 3 pm ET across ESPN networks in the US). They go into the sport at Camp Nou 11 factors away from Madrid, with 4 video games of the season left. That means Barça wants only a draw to be confirmed as league champions, securing the title towards their largest rivals, in essentially the most high-profile sport in membership soccer. The Catalans’ celebrations could be raucous, and Madrid’s struggling could be much more acute for having to expertise all of it, up shut, with nowhere to cover.
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You may assume that Classics are at all times decisive. After all, every LaLiga season inevitably concludes with giants Madrid and Barça battling it out for the title, with an outsider like Atlético Madrid sometimes making it a three-horse race. The factors up for grabs in every season’s two league Clásicos inevitably go a way in direction of deciding the place the trophy is headed.
“There’s a heightened sense of anticipation going into these games,” Paul Clement, Carlo Ancelotti’s assistant in his first spell at Madrid – and now working with Ancelotti teaching Brazil‘s nationwide workforce — informed ESPN in 2024. “You know you’re going to have an impact on where the title goes. They’re six-point games.”
Take final season, the place Barcelona’s LaLiga title win — in coach Hansi Flick’s first marketing campaign in cost — was made attainable by successful each league Clásicos: a complete 4-0 victory on the Bernabéu in October 2024, and a extra aggressive 4-3 win at Montjuïc in May 2025. Barça had been one of the best workforce all season, however the Clásicos sealed the deal for Flick. They ended the season 4 factors forward of Real Madrid.
The season earlier than additionally noticed Carlo Ancelotti’s Madrid find yourself as champions thanks, partially, to a Clásico double. They beat Barça 2-1 at Montjuïc in October 2023 because of Jude Bellingham‘s brace, and then 3-2, with one other dramatic Bellingham added-time winner, in April 2024. Madrid completed the marketing campaign with a 10-point lead over Barça, however these Clásico outcomes, particularly the primary, set the tone.
Other Clásicos have seen managers fired, and complete tasks reassessed. Barcelona’s 5-1 win at Camp Nou in October 2018, with Luis Suarez scoring a hat trick, signaled a untimely finish for Julen Lopetegui as Real Madrid coach after simply 4 months within the job. Another drastically one-sided scoreline, a 4-0 victory for Barça on the Bernabéu in November 2015, was the start of the top for Rafa Benítez, who by no means regained the belief of membership president Florentino Pérez and was sacked two months later.
Go additional again, to what many take into account the height of the rivalry — the Guardiola vs. Mourinho years — and there are many examples of season-defining Clásicos. Barcelona’s 6-2 destruction of Manuel Pellegrini’s Madrid on the Bernabéu in May 2009, for some the best Clásico efficiency by a workforce, left Barça in a commanding place, seven factors clear on the high of the desk with 4 video games left.
Then, 18 months later, in November 2010, Guardiola’s 5-0 Camp Nou demolition of Mourinho’s challengers was unforgettable, though it solely left Barça two factors forward of Madrid with 25 matches remaining, the title’s vacation spot nonetheless an open query. When the 2 groups met 4 occasions in three competitions over 18 grueling days in 2011, the 1-1 LaLiga drew left the hole at eight factors, with six video games left.
“Everyone remembers those games,” former Madrid defender Raul Albiol — who watched the 5-0 from the bench, and was despatched off within the 2011 encounter — informed ESPN in 2023. “They were special.”
But in a single, shocking respect, Sunday’s sport may high all of them. If Barcelona keep away from defeat, this assembly would grow to be the primary Clásico in virtually 100 years — relationship again to 1932 — to definitively, mathematically decide the title’s vacation spot. Back then, on the ultimate day of the 1931-32 marketing campaign, Madrid clinched the league by drawing 2-2 at Barcelona, and thus confirming Madrid’s end forward of second-placed Athletic Club. It was the primary of Madrid’s 36 league titles thus far.
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Will Barcelona win back-to-back LaLiga titles in El Clásico?
Luis Garcia and Craig Burley preview the upcoming El Clásico with Barcelona getting ready to successful one other LaLiga title.
Anything however a loss for Barcelona on Sunday would, due to this fact, be history within the making. It would additionally affirm the extent of Madrid’s present disaster on and off the sphere. Back-to-back seasons with no main trophy simply do not are likely to occur on the success manufacturing facility that’s the Bernabéu. In reality, it is one thing that occurs as soon as each 20 years or so. Madrid’s final two consecutive seasons with out main silverware got here in 2004-05 and 2005-06. Before that, it was all the best way again in 1982-83 and 1983-84.
In 2006, the implications for Madrid had been seismic: Pérez resigned as president, admitting that “a change of direction” was required after the failure of the star-studded Galáctico undertaking, earlier than returning three years later. This summer season, with a brand new coach set to switch Álvaro Arbeloa and plans for a squad shake-up — in addition to widespread requires an overhaul of the membership at government degree — may very well be equally dramatic.
If there’s one, small comfort for Madrid, it is that they nonetheless have an opportunity to delay Barça’s celebrations. This season’s two earlier Clásicos, Madrid’s 2-1 LaLiga win in October and Barça’s 3-2 Spanish Super Cup victory in January, have proven that in a one-off head-to-head contest with their rivals, this Madrid aspect can compete.
Granted, the context now’s completely different. Arbeloa is a coach, not Alonso. The workforce has endured a mortifying week of dressing room revelations, culminating in a bodily altercation between two senior gamers, Tchouaméni and Valverde. And we do not but know if Mbappé’s health will enable him to carry out something near his finest.
It would not look good, however Madrid should cling to their hopes of pulling off an upset, to forestall Barça from writing one other painful chapter on this epic rivalry.
