With the loud and convincing 4:0 victory in the middle of the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium over Real, the German coach of Barcelona, Hanzi Flick, broke a second negative streak of the Catalan giants in just 3 days.
After 4 losses in a row, he won El Clasico, and in the sweetest way. Before that, the terror in the Champions League of “Bayern” was stopped. After 6 victories of the German colossus, “Barca” also prevailed decisively – 4:1.
Flick’s perfect debut in one of world football’s iconic derbies brought another achievement to the Catalans.
This is their 10th defeat against their greatest rival this century. For their part, Madrid have only 3 major successes since 2001.
Barca’s top ten started in 2004 and 2005, when they recorded classic 3-0 victories in El Clasico.
A break of 4 years followed to reach 6:2 for the Catalans. In the following 2010, they increased the difference – 5:0. Here comes the derby from 2015, won by “Barcelona” 4:0. 2 years later, “Real” has to swallow another 0:3, and in 2018, 1:5.
A year after that, “Barca” claimed a classic success with 3:0 in the tournament for the King’s Cup. And already the penultimate pogrom against Madrid was from the spring of 2022 – also with 4:0.
Real, on the other hand, are 4-1 in the league in 2008 and 4-0 and 4-1 in last year’s cup semi-final and January’s Super Cup final, respectively.
The success of Hanzi Flick in El Clasico is all the sweeter because it was achieved with several boys from the Barca school who still have many years of big football ahead of them such as Lamin Yamal, Pau Kobarsi, Marc Casado, Alejandro Balde and Pedri.
Yamal scored the third goal and after the game he was in a bad mood. “Maybe they don’t know at “Real” that I have a right foot,” said the 17-year-old prodigy. The European champion with Spain usually shoots left-handed. In Madrid, however, he surprised the hosts with an unsaveable shot with his right foot.
Robert Lewandowski, who was 19 years older than him, scored twice against the capital city, and the last goal was scored by captain Rafinha.
Thus, the left wing in Flick’s scheme collected 4 hits from the matches with “Bayern” and “Real”. Center forward Lewandowski scored 3 and Yamal scored once.
At the opposite pole to the German coach was the debut of megastar Kylian Mbappe in El Clasico. In his first derby, the French striker of “Real” played probably his weakest match in his career.
The captain of the “roosters” recorded an anti-record, falling into an ambush 8 times. Mbappe scored, but from an offside, so he finished with 0 goals and assists.
As many as 9 times the Frenchman lost the ball. He made 2 unsuccessful attempts to cross. Only on 1 out of 4 dribbles did he connect.
In 90 minutes on the field, Mbappe managed to make only 13 accurate passes to his colleagues.
In the “Barcelona” penalty area, he managed to touch the ball 7 times.