Club Focus – Real Madrid – An April shower of El Clasicos to look forward to
After Real Madrid’s thrashing of Tottenham on Tuesday, Barcelona had to go one better, and subsequently fired home five goals in their Champions League quarter final this week. In doing so the Catalans have done their bit to add to the unstoppable excitement and intrigue which will be garnered ahead of their possibly mouthwatering semi-final clash.
Already in Spain the media is awash with hyperbole. El Mundo has branded the game the “semi-final of the century” while AS go for “the mother of all semi-finals” in what must have been arguably the mother of all sub-editing duels for a catchy title. Madrid based newspaper Marca decries: “We’ve never seen anything like this,” not specifically referring to just the European ties, but indeed to a quartet of El Clasicos across three competitions in just eighteen days. Not even widespread fears about the Spanish economy can detract attention from the bumper compendium of matches between two of the world’s grandest global footballing phenomena.
The opening act will be a league fixture at the Bernabeu on April 16th in which Madrid will try to extract some revenge from the 5-0 hammering they received at the Camp Nou in November. Trailing Barca by eight points, the la Liga ghost is almost up for Jose Mourinho’s side but that will not dampen the Madridista’s expectations, and the necessity to win a game which, although may have little bearing on the league outcome, will have an influence on the remainder of the meetings.
Over such a short period of time any recriminations from one game will be carried to the next with no end of individual and collective scores to be settled. The last meeting of the pair was marred by angry scuffles approaching the final whistle after Sergio Ramos was dismissed for cutting down Lionel Messi. The sight of the Spanish World Cup winning band of brothers leaving country pride aside to throttle one another for their clubs shows just how much these games mean to the protagonists.
A mere four days needs to pass from the Bernabeu before hostilities are again resumed at Valencia’s Mestalla which will host the Copa del Rey final and bring about the first piece of domestic silverware of the season. Los Blancos have failed to lift the trophy for eighteen years and will be loathed to be pliant in allowing Barca a domestic double. The myth about clubs on the continent not taking cup competitions seriously may have to be revisited after that encounter.
The two-legged Champions League semi-final will then provide a replication of the ‘Match of the Century’ nickname the same encounter got in 2002. Whatever the clash gets called or becomes to be known, there cannot or will not be too many encounters that have contained thirteen World Cup winners, sixteen Champions League winners, and the last four Ballon d’Or winners. We have never seen anything like this.
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