El Clásico Quick Thoughts

Another Clásico in the books.

While I’m not 100% surprised with the result, given how these two teams have played this season, I was surprised by the lopsidedness of the match.

This is Flick’s first trophy of the season and it’s a bounce-back Barcelona needs to get back rolling for the second half of the season.

This match really came down to a lot of individual mistakes by Madrid, and as well Ancelotti not setting his team up for success.

Let’s look at some quick data points, my initial thoughts, and some player ratings.

Possession

After Mbappe’s goal in the 5th minute, I thought this would be a closer match than it was, as it looked early that they might have figured out how to play against this Barcelona team. They play a high line and like to control possession so Madrid could try to win back possession in the midfield and then play through balls to Mbappe and Vinicius.

The issue was Barcelona ended up, until the red card, with about 65% of possession which would have been fine if Madrid was trying to put pressure on the midfield and back line, but there wasn’t a pressure in sight.

For example, look at the pressure on Kounde right before he makes the pass to Raphinha for the 3rd goal…

It’s hard to play against a team that likes to hold the ball if you aren’t going to pressure them.

Madrid did a much better job in this match of not being offside, but most of that was due to they just didn’t have the ball, and after the red card Barcelona just sat back in a 10-man low block.

Barcelona on the counter

One thing I’ve really liked about how Barca has played this year has been the ability to find Raphinha on the counter, which I think has been why he has been so good this season.

His second goal and his assist both came from him getting out on the counter and being able to play the correct pass or shot.

Even in games like the Bayern Munich game, he found ways to counter and score.

This isn’t what a traditional Barcelona team is known for but given the squad they have it works really well to use it to their advantage.

This season they have already accumulated 34 counterattacks in La Liga which is 13 more than the 21 they had in all of last season.

Madrid’s lopsided squad

When a boat is lopsided and its center of gravity gets shifted too far the boat will tip and capsize. This Madrid team is a boat that is capsizing.

They have spent so much money and effort on creating an attack that is arguably the most talented on earth that they seem to have forgotten they need players in other positions. Their defense can’t defend if Madrid isn’t controlling the possession battle, and their midfield often leaves huge gaps which especially against a Barcelona team is a big no-no.

I’m not sure they address it during this winter transfer period, but they need a new right back and another center back ASAP.

I also won’t be surprised to see one of Vinicius and Rodrygo leaving after this season to balance the attack a little bit (I think it will be Rodrygo, but I would choose to keep him and sell Vinicius to balance the attack some more).

Player Ratings