Real Madrid wins "El Clasico" and beats Barcelona 1-3!

This was a fun match. After both teams having very disappointing matches in the past week in La Liga I was expecting to see a boring and low-level match today, but that wasn't the case at all! In the first 8 minutes, there were already 2 goals scored and both teams were playing decently.

I liked Zidane's decisions to play with Mendy as a left-back and leaving Modric on the bench for the second half, not because Modric is bad, but because he is very old and is unable to play 90 minutes with top performance, he entered the field in the 69-minute mark played a great match and scored a beautiful goal.

With Koeman, I also enjoyed the fact he left Griezmann on the bench. This is a great player but sadly he hasn't found a way to play well with Barcelona's teammates. He plays fantastic with France and the same happened when he was in Atletico de Madrid, but now with Barcelona, he seems lost. He entered the field in the second half and did nothing, as usual. This should be worrisome for Barcelona because Griezmann is at an age where he should be playing great week after week, he is neither too young nor too old but in that sweet spot for a football player that is being 29yo.

After the 2 goals in the first 8 minutes, the rest of the first half was even. The tie was a fair result so far. In the second half, Barcelona was a little bit better in the beginning. They were controlling the ball and causing danger near Courtois and they almost scored their second goal on 2 occasions. However, in a corner in favor of Real Madrid, Ramos suffered a silly fault from Lenglet and after checking the VAR, a penalty was decided. In my opinion, the penalty was fair because Lenglet almost broke Ramos' t-shirt. That was a fault for sure. Ramos himself was the one in charge of the penalty and he scored with ease.

This goal was extremely frustrating for Barcelona, they started to feel more nervous and act more erratically on the pitch. Real Madrid gained a lot of confidence and calm. As the minutes began to run out Barcelona's desperation got worse, they started to add a lot of attacking players and forgot about the defense, which allowed Real Madrid to find bigger spaces when counterattacking.

In the last 10 minutes of the match, Real Madrid could have scored 3 more goals easily, Kross and Ramos missed 2 chances, and then Modric was the man who scored the third goal. All of these opportunities were the result of Barcelona's decision to focus only on the attack and not on the defense, they risked receiving the third goal to try and score their second one but it didn't pay off.

Taking everything into consideration, this was a just victory for Real Madrid, they deserved to win and they did. After suffering 2 defeats in a row, the first one against Cadiz in La Liga and then against Shakhtar in the Champions League, it was extremely important for Real Madrid to beat Barcelona today. This confidence boost will surely help them in the matches to come.

Barcelona, on the other hand, now has 2 defeats in a row in La Liga and 3 matches in a row without winning in that same tournament, it is not looking very good for them but the season is just beginning. Their next match will be a very demanding one against Juventus in the Champions League next Wednesday. Real Madrid's next match will be next Tuesday against Borussia Mönchengladbach (pretty name huh?) in the Champions League as well.