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On one side of El Clásico, there was Kylian Mbappé. There were Vinícius Jr. and Jude Bellingham. There were the reigning European champions, the latest wave of Galácticos, the most feared attack in soccer, the reason Real Madrid was the overwhelming favorite to win La Liga.
And on the other, the Barcelona side, there was zero fear.
There was, instead, a bold offside trap that foiled and frustrated Real Madrid; and, in the second half, there was Robert Lewandowski.
Lewandowski scored twice in three minutes Saturday to silence Madrid’s palatial Santiago Bernabéu Stadium and break open the season’s first Clásico. Barca’s teen sensation, Lamine Yamal, eventually added a third goal. Soon thereafter, Raphinha sealed a deserved 4-0 victory.
But the story of the game unspooled in a fascinating first half. Again and again, Real Madrid raced forward. And again and again, Mbappé was thwarted by a strategy that, pundits insisted, Barcelona surely wouldn’t employ against the champs.
Under German manager Hansi Flick, Barca has pressed and squeezed opponents into submission this season. Forwards have hunted the ball. Defenders have held a perilously high line that restricts space in front of them, tilts the field and allows Barca to play on the front foot for 90 madcap minutes.
But if it did that against Mbappé and Vini, the thinking went, with so much space behind it, it would get punished.
“If they play like that, they’ll concede goal after goal after goal,” ESPN color commentator Steve McManaman warned as Saturday’s game got underway.
Barca, though, never flinched. It not only “played like that,” it played the high line expertly. It caught Real Madrid offside eight times in the game’s first 36 minutes. (Eight! In 36 minutes!) Mbappé mis-timed run after run. Fans at the Bernabeu thrashed their arms in fury — but every single call was the correct one, because Barca’s midfield was active and its defenders in-sync.
In the 30th minute, Mbappé scored, but VAR overturned the goal because he was off by half a body length.
Vini broke the trap once, but dragged his shot wide of the near post. And that, officially, was the only shot Real Madrid managed in the entire first half — because the rest were annulled by an assistant referee’s flag.
For most of the half, Barca seemed to be skating on proverbial thin ice. But under Flick — who implemented similar styles at the helm of Bayern Munich and the German national team — the Catalan kids have already grown comfortable with peril. They’ve accepted the inherent pitfalls of the strategy. They’ve bought into the belief that benefits outweigh risk. And they’ve flourished.
They’ve created more Expected Goals (xG) than any other team in Europe’s Big Five leagues by a massive margin. They’ve now scored 37 goals in 11 La Liga games.
They’ve also caught opponents offside a whopping 77 times, more than twice as many as any other top-flight team in Spain, England, Germany or Italy.
All because they “have the balls to play a defensive line that high,” as defensive midfielder Marc Casadó said postgame in Spanish. “It’s incredible. And at the moment, it’s working.”
On Saturday, Mbappé finally beat their trap in the 71st minute. But his shot was saved, and besides, by then, Barca’s rampant attack had done its thing. Casadó unlocked Real Madrid with a lovely through ball. Lewandowski beat Madrid’s sloppy offside trap for his first of two goals.
His second was a header. Yamal and Raphinha then added to the tally. Real Madrid, curiously, felt like the team that was fazed by a grand occasion. And Barca, with the emphatic win, leapt to 30 points, six clear of Madrid atop La Liga.