Below is a summary of Barcelona’s win against Madrid in the 2014 “El Clasico” La Liga game (4-3); probably the best El clasico ever played!
Written by: Theodore, reporter in ISFM
This game was a La Liga match unlike others. Barcelona was in their best years and had gotten their hands on one of the best attacking trio: Messi, Neymar Jr, and Suarez. Real Madrid had Ronaldo in his prime, a senior player, Benzema, who added squad depth, and Di Maria. It all started with a goal from Iniesta at just the 7th minute. A Real Madrid player tried to cross the ball to Ronaldo so that he could header it but the pass was too high and it resulted in a goal kick. After getting the ball by the midfielders and passing for a bit there, they gave it back to the defense, who did a long pass to Messi on the right side of the field (Barcelona perspective). He dribbled past 2 players before passing it in the midfield again. He would get the ball back shortly after and cleverly passed it to Iniesta who was running towards the final third on the left side (space in between the box and the sideline. He quickly outran the defender behind him before finishing it off with a nice top bins goal. 1-0 At the 19 minute mark, Barcelona got another opportunity. Neymar Jr managed to get near the 18 yard box and dribbled around to the left side, but committed a foul on the way to Marcelo. Later the ball was given to the defence and one of them sent the ball completely across the pitch to Carvajal which then the ball was volleyed to Gareth Bale close to him. Bale then tried to outrun the defender to his left and chose to chip it to Karim Benzema but the defender managed to head it back instead. Gareth Bale then got the ball back and passed it to a teammate on his left who crossed it to Benzema and he headered it into the back of the net. After the goal, Di Maria suffered an injury but was back fairly quickly. 1-1 The kickoff was fairly normal with passes all around the midfield and only a foul from Benzema. After, Barcelona slowly started to advance but one of their passes got intercepted by the defenders and Real Madrid started a counter-attack. It was stopped by a bad pass from Benzema (I think there is a bit too much Benzema related things going on, at this point) but they ended up back with the ball in their possession 30 sec. later. (I’m serious) Then, they started to pass until Di Maria got the ball in the final third and crossed it to Benzema who proceeded to hit the ball with his chest to volley it in the goal. At the 35’ minute, Di Maria committed a rough foul on Neymar Jr and got shown a yellow for the slide tackle. If you watched that game without knowing the teams you would see that both teams were at least rivals by their aggressive play. During the 38th minute, CR7 committed a foul on Messi, which then Barcelona got the ball into the midfield and passed it to Messi but he started to dribble for a bit. In the end, he didn’t manage to advance that much and passed it to a teammate on his left. The teammate then gave the ball to Iniesta on the left and exchanged passes in front of the box. They attempted a shot which was blocked by a defender to lose it from a tackle sending the ball out of bounds. Barcelona was awarded a corner kick but Bale cleared the ball before anything could get too dangerous for Real Madrid. Later, they intercepted a pass and restarted their attack and Neymar did almost the same thing Messi did before and failed, losing the ball to a foul. Barcelona got possession shortly after and counter-attack. They passed, each and every time getting closer and closer to the goal until Messi got the ball at the 42th minute and scored. 2-2 20 minutes later, Rudiger lost a tackle to Xavi and he started to pass to the defenders next to him. Pique then passed it to Messi and he followed by giving it to Neymar. Neymar then ran into the box trying to get rid of Sergio Ramos behind him. The defender probably knew that Neymar was going to score so he slide-tackled Neymar to prevent him from scoring. Barcelona was awarded a penalty and Ramos got sent off. And you know who stepped up for the shot, Lionel Messi. He scored but it was close to Diego Lopez who dived in the direction of ball and just passing next to the goalkeeper’s glove. 3-2 After a few changes were made at the 66th, 69th and 78th minute, Ancelotti brought in Varane and took off Benzema whilst Barcelona had Pedro and Sanchez join and Neymar and Fabregas made their exit. In the 82th minute, Barcelona got another chance and Iniesta got the ball on the left side. Two defenders, Dani Carvajal and Xavi Alonso tried to tackle him at the same time but ended up squishing him between them and he went down inside the box. A yellow card was given to Xavi for tripping him but Carvajal still had a clean record (in terms of cards in this game). And of course it was Messi who took it, of course he was going to score again completing his hat-trick, of course he was going to send the goalkeeper the same direction as the ball, but, you know, he’s going to score. It was 4-3 for Barcelona. They all knew they had it in the bag. It was all over. Barcelona had won the game, but it wasn’t given to them, they had to fight for it. The iconic and heart-warming/relieving or dreadful 3 whistle blows indicating the game was done were heard at 90 minutes and 3 minutes of stoppage time.
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Written by: Theodore, reporter in ISFM
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