Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Carles Puyol the Differences as Barcelona Edges Past Real Madrid

The hype, the pomp, the cir­cum­stance.  All of these rose to a higher level for this episode of El Clásico at the Camp Nou on Sun­day evening.  Com­ing into this match, FC Barcelona turned their for­tunes around in the UEFA Cham­pi­ons League with a 2–0 vic­tory over Inter Milan.  The score­line hardly gave any jus­tice to both teams as Barcelona played as well as Inter played poorly.  The impo­tency in attack as well as the non­cha­lance in defense for Inter con­trasted with the ele­gant pass­ing foot­ball and the defen­sive pres­sure pre­sented by Barça.  What resulted were two goals in twenty-six min­utes and a will­ing­ness to keep pos­ses­sion, as Inter Milan did not use their abil­ity to close Barça down.

Real Madrid was more work­man­like in their 1–0 win over FC Zürich.  Read­ing the stat sheet would con­vince all those who did not wit­ness the match that Real dom­i­nated their lowly Swiss oppo­nents, but the desire and spirit within the Zürich squad con­tributed to a tighter than expected match.  Real toiled through a phys­i­cal encounter to rise to the top of their Cham­pi­ons League group with one match to go, and they were able to give Cris­tiano Ronaldo his first action in sev­eral weeks.  His twenty-minute stint was not any­thing spe­cial, but the most impor­tant rea­son that man­ager Manuel Pel­le­grini sent him out against FC Zürich was to get him used to live foot­ball before their match against Barcelona.

The biggest pieces of news before the Real — Barça clash were the absences of Zla­tan Ibrahi­movic and Raúl from their respec­tive teams’ start­ing eleven.  Raúl’s omis­sion did not come as too much of a sur­prise because Gon­zalo Higuaín has been the in form striker in the last few games, but for Pel­le­grini to exclude Raúl in such a mon­u­men­tal occa­sion shows that he is in full con­trol of this team and will do what he feels is best for the team, even if that means pass­ing over Real leg­ends like Raúl and Guti.  As for Ibrahi­movic, he strug­gled with a ham­string injury that occurred in a league match against Mal­lorca three weeks ago and forced him to miss two friend­lies for the Swedish national team and a Cham­pi­ons League encounter against Inter Milan.  Both Raúl and Ibrahi­movic were avail­able on their sides’ benches if necessary.

Many expected this match to be a goal fest, sim­i­lar to their last meet­ing in early May, when Real Madrid fought their way back into the title race with a tor­rid fifty-two points out of a pos­si­ble fifty-four head­ing into El Clásico.  Barcelona would dom­i­nate the pro­ceed­ings with a 2–6 thrash­ing at the San­ti­ago Bern­abéu to seal La Liga for the Blau­grana.  What tran­spired this Sun­day was more akin to the first Barcelona — Real Madrid meet­ing last sea­son, where goals were at a pre­mium, and the phys­i­cal nature of both teams was a major part in influ­enc­ing the run of play.

Even though it was 0–0 at half­time, Real won the open­ing forty-five min­utes by cre­at­ing the bet­ter chances and snuff­ing out the influ­ences of Xavi Hernán­dez, Andrés Ini­esta, and Lionel Messi.  Manuel Pellegrini’s tac­tics forced the ball away from Xavi, the con­duc­tor of the Catalun­yan orches­tra, and Barcelona bypassed the mid­field alto­gether on more occa­sions than they pre­fer.  Xabi Alonso and Las­sana Diarra worked in syn­ergy in the mid­field, as their two dom­i­nated the mid­field three of Barcelona.

Real had the best oppor­tu­nity to score in the first half in the 20th minute, when Kaká‘s run from the left flank into the penalty area set up a pass across the box to an unmarked Cris­tiano Ronaldo.  Ronaldo took the shot first-time to the left far post and had Barça keeper Vic­tor Valdés going the wrong way.  Valdés some­how deflected the shot with his trail­ing legs and went wide of the post for a cor­ner.  Ronaldo might be crit­i­cized for not fin­ish­ing a golden oppor­tu­nity, but most of the credit should belong to Valdés, as he con­tin­ues to become one of Spain’s top goal­keep­ers with­out ever being noticed.  Those gaffes that have plagued his career are at a bare min­i­mum, and Barcelona rewarded this con­sis­tency with a con­tract exten­sion through 2014 in the offseason.

The start of the sec­ond half was more of the same as each team received yel­low cards for pro­fes­sional fouls.  Both teams tended to halt any sem­blance of a counter-attack or break­away with a pro­fes­sional foul or sig­nif­i­cant con­tact.  Barcelona con­tin­ued to pos­sess the ball at a high per­cent­age but failed to sub­stan­ti­ate it with any note­wor­thy chances.  Barça man­ager Pep Guardi­ola made the first move in the tac­ti­cal game between Pel­le­grini and him when he sent in Zla­tan Ibrahi­movic in the 51st minute for an inef­fec­tive Thierry Henry.  Henry started the match in the cen­ter of the three for­ward line with Messi on his right and Ini­esta on his left but found lit­tle suc­cess.  He drifted to his more com­fort­able left flank as the game wore on but still could not engi­neer a legit­i­mate scor­ing opportunity.

The blasé Barcelona attack sud­denly became much more potent with Ibrahi­movic lead­ing the line.  They had their best spell of pos­ses­sion two min­utes into Ibrahimovic’s shift, when a series of patented Barça short, inci­sive passes ulti­mately led to a shot blocked by Xabi Alonso.  Although they did not con­vert, Barcelona brought dif­fer­ent ideas into the fold and con­cerned an already wor­ried Real Madrid, as they felt the momen­tum shift toward their Catalun­yan rivals.

Real Madrid stub­bornly suc­cumbed to this momen­tum when Barcelona broke the dead­lock in the 56th minute.  Ibrahi­movic volleyed in a left-footed shot to give Barça the 1–0 lead.  Dani Alves gets equal credit for the goal because of a won­der­ful early cross, and Ibrahi­movic still had plenty to do, as his left-footed vol­ley was tech­ni­cally dif­fi­cult.  Many play­ers with this par­tic­u­lar oppor­tu­nity would either blaze it high over the cross­bar or com­pletely mist­ime the cross and whiff on the shot.  This moment was why Barcelona was so aggres­sive in bring­ing Zla­tan Ibrahi­movic from Inter Milan.  As tech­ni­cally gifted and football-intelligent as he is, he built a rep­u­ta­tion for com­ing up small in the most impor­tant moments.  Whether this asser­tion was fair or not became irrel­e­vant at this instant as Ibrahi­movic etched his name into the fab­ric of this his­toric rivalry.

The eupho­ria would be short-lived as Ser­gio Bus­quets received his sec­ond yel­low card for an unnec­es­sary and delib­er­ate hand­ball in mid­field in the 62nd minute.  Touré Yaya came in for Sey­dou Keita to beef up the mid­field and fill the absence of Bus­quets, and Andrés Ini­esta dropped back into the mid­field to pro­duce a 4–3-2 for­ma­tion.  As well as Barcelona’s offen­sive flair dri­ves their over­all phi­los­o­phy, it often over­looks their defen­sive tenac­ity and dis­ci­pline.  Car­les Puyol is the cap­tain of the team for a rea­son, and he wears the Catalun­yan arm­band with abound­ing pride and grit.  Barcelona held on to the clean sheet and the win thanks to Puyol’s defen­sive posi­tion­ing and sheer will.

He fully com­mit­ted to slid­ing chal­lenges that pre­vented poten­tial goals in the 26th, 53rd, and 70th min­utes, and as Real pushed for­ward with a one-man advan­tage and a one-goal deficit, Puyol led the defen­sive line, always insist­ing to be com­pact with his words and his hand ges­tures.  While Zla­tan Ibrahi­movic scored the goal that made the dif­fer­ence on the score­board, Car­les Puyol clearly was the man of the match as he per­son­i­fied the for­ti­tude and deter­mi­na­tion of FC Barcelona.  Those rumors of Puyol leav­ing for Man­ches­ter City seem laugh­able now.

Despite the hyper­bole sur­round­ing the match, Barcelona’s three-point win over their blood rivals only gives the Blau­grana a ten­u­ous two point lead over Los Merengues, with a myr­iad of chal­lengers just behind them with twenty-six rounds of matches left.  Real Madrid will take solace in the fact that Cris­tiano Ronaldo is on his way back to full fit­ness, and their team will con­tinue to gel as the cam­paign con­tin­ues.  Sevilla and Valen­cia have the tal­ent to break the duop­oly at the top of La Liga.  Today, how­ever, belongs to the ten­ants of Camp Nou.

This past week was a lit­mus test in their efforts to recap­ture the once incon­ceiv­able tre­ble.  Barcelona was in grave dan­ger of not qual­i­fy­ing for the knock­out stages of the Cham­pi­ons League and falling four points behind Real Madrid at the end of Novem­ber.  The mark of a cham­pion is when they win when not play­ing at their best.  Hardly any­one will say that Barcelona was at their scin­til­lat­ing best against Inter Milan and Real Madrid, but they achieved their desired results with­out com­pro­mis­ing their beliefs and philoso­phies.  The 155th edi­tion of El Clásico ends with a 1–0 vic­tory for FC Barcelona.  A tension-filled thriller, it was nei­ther the pret­ti­est nor the best played match in the his­tory of this rivalry, but the effort and intent dis­played by all involved in the match were unsurpassed.

Tagged as: barcelona, Carles Puyol, Cristiano Ronaldo, El Clasico, FC Barcelona, Inter Milan, La Liga, lionel messi, Manuel Pellegrini, Pep Guardiola, real madrid, Thierry Henry, UEFA Champions League, Victor Valdes, Zlatan Ibrahimovic