Even empty, the Camp Nou is the Camp Nou for Madrid.
They need to feel to play, to know that they are looked at, admired and hated in order to win, and in the stadium they are recognized as a competitive and powerful team, unique also because of the reverential fear it provokes, victorious after the intervention of the capricious VAR, which He did not want to miss such an appetizing classic;
The appearance of video arbitration killed Barça when they had Madrid with one foot around their neck in an open and happy match, propaganda for LaLiga.
The Catalans found in technology the argument to get out of the classic in a bad way, refer to the referees and somehow justify a painful defeat with a superior Madrid.
In the eyes of Barça, with and without people, Madrid is still Madrid, undefeated in the stadium since the arrival of Zidane.
Zizou is a shaman and, as such, his legend is fueled by duels against the likes of Barça.
There are already six games without losing, two wins and four draws, the same classics that Messi has without scoring, despite completing a very interesting hour of the game, at the end less important than Sergio Ramos.
The white captain is a capital player, as influential in his team as in the opposite and in the context of the matches, feared and admired like Madrid itself.
Ramos' power shone through in a match played in daylight so that fans could also see that Koeman's project is for now as ambitious as it is fragile and vulnerable in a stormy time at the club due to the end of Bartomeu's term.
BCN
one
-
3
RMA
BarcelonaNeto, Alba (Braithwaite, min. 86), Clement Lenglet, Piqué, Sergiño Dest, Pedri (Trincão, min. 80), Busquets (Ousmane Dembélé, min. 81), Coutinho, Frenkie De Jong, Messi and Ansu Fati (Griezmann , min. 80) Real Madrid Courtois, Sergio Ramos, Nacho (Lucas Vázquez, min. 42), Ferland Mendy, Varane, Federico Valverde (Modric, min. 68), Kroos, Casemiro, Marco Asensio (Rodrygo, min. 80), Vinicius Junior and Benzema
Goals0-1 min.
4: Federico Valverde.
1-1 min.
7: Ansu Fati.
1-2 min.
62: Sergio Ramos.
1-3 min.
89: Modric.
Referee Juan Martínez Munuera Yellow cards Casemiro (min. 18), Clement Lenglet (min. 28), Nacho (min. 36), Alba (min. 61) and Messi (min. 90)
Koeman does not politicize with the line-up or manage figures but he attends to the meritocracy to end the accommodation and hierarchies of the dressing room and the erratic sports policy of the president of Barça.
No signing has been more suspicious than that of Griezmann nor has there been a more welcome addition than that of Pedri, an icon of the future with Ansu Fati and to a certain extent also with Dest, a starter ahead of Sergi Roberto.
At the end of the day, it is about making a team and not distributing the footballers on the field, a bet that forces us to pay attention to ambitious young people and not to veterans who ask to play a la carte to justify their poster even before interventionist technicians such as Koeman.
Barça plays differently with or without Griezmann although Pedri did not exactly stand out against Madrid.
Zidane also risked because he needed to activate a reluctant team defeated by Cádiz and Shakhtar.
He opted for Asensio, a footballer as talented as he was disputed, and dispensed with a fourth midfielder like Modric.
Even the media line Benzema picked up, delicious for his reading of the game, intelligent to remove Piqué from his place, and filter the passes for the arrival of powerful midfielders like Valverde.
From the possession and calm, Madrid surprised Barça: 0-1.
The Barça response was as exciting as their training: Messi deepened for Jordi Alba and his center was finished off by Ansu, at age 17 the second-youngest scorer in a classic: 1-1.
A well-known and equally effective play from the manual in the order laid out by Koeman.
Messi, turned on and exhausted
Ansu played as a striker in attack and as a defender in defense and Messi acted as a hitch, especially active and a finisher, only reduced by Courtois.
The goalkeeper took a shot at goal after the 10 broke Ramos.
Rosario's dribbles created superiority situations in the same way that Benzema's movements, also neutralized by Neto, dismantled Barcelona's containment system in a fun and grateful game for the viewer in the absence of fans at the Camp Nou.
Perhaps Madrid was very selective and Barcelona more continuous in their attacking outbursts due to the omnipresence of Messi and Ansu Fati.
Lacking balance and control, unorthodox due to the exchange of positions, the team played collectively and individually for 10. They helped more than Coutinho and Pedri did.
The plan calls for playing at an impossible pace for quietly educated players like Busquets.
The steering wheels have diminished and lost weight at Barça.
The Madridistas were more and better in the division and the Catalans were more electric in their downloads with Messi and Fati.
In exchange for playing revolutionized, too much so as not to be permeable and avoid turnovers, Barcelona had more poison than the calm Madrid.
The Catalans feed on the energy of Ansu and those of Madrid of Ramos.
Nobody accompanied the Barcelona player in his best moments, electric in the uncheck and the centers, and instead the game turned in favor of the madridista in a penalty scored by the captain of Madrid.
The VAR intervened after a grab from Lenglet to Ramos, after a push from the white central defender to Barça, and the referee whistled the maximum penalty transformed by the captain: there are already 25 in a row marked without error by Ramos.
The penalty caused the Barça resignation and blinded Koeman, who is betting in an extreme way because he is in a hurry to triumph at the Camp Nou.
The changes did not work and Modric put a beautiful third goal to seal the triumph of the mature Madrid, denied before by Neto.
Barça, a team to do, did not care, because the game had been presented as a platform for the future and they ended up looking to the past and discussing the referees and Madrid.