In the end,Barcelonawere just too good and Madrid just not good enough: not just here, in the clásico that effectively clinched the league title, but all season long. Hansi Flick’s young team have been wild and fun, and they are going to be double winners, La Liga taken the way they played out the season. Montjuic briefly held its breath and then celebrated in the sunshine, as they watched their side concede two inside 15 minutes, seemingly inviting a catastrophe, and still win. Because if Kylian Mbappé scored a hat-trick here, Barcelona scored more. Which is what they do.
Four times Barcelona have faced their rivals this season and four times they have beaten them, scoring 16 times.The firstset up the league season,the secondwon them the Super Cup,the thirdtook the Copa del Rey and the last, another portrait of the campaign for both sides, took Barcelona seven points clear with only nine in play. They trailed early, but goals from Eric García, Lamine Yamal and two for Raphinha saw them do it again, any ghosts from their European exit gone on another fearless afternoon, where the only strange thing was that Madrid were ever even in it – let alone within a goal until the end.
It had felt like much of this game might be decided in the mind, the psychology central to the way it played out. And if Barcelona were vulnerable having returneddefeated from Milan, Madrid reminded that they could be hurt, they could not have started worse. The latest clásico was not three minutes in when Pau Cubarsí sold Wojciech Szczesny short. The pass was an accident waiting to happen and the goalkeeper’s response to it was as well. Szczesny lunged at Mbappé, gifting the penalty from which the Frenchman gave Madrid the lead.
It was doubled within a quarter of an hour, when Lamine Yamal came dashing inside from the right and fell as he went past Fede Valverde. Barcelona wanted a free-kick; Madrid escaped up the wing, where Vinícius Júnior bent into the path of Mbappé with the outside of his foot. Mbappé scored his second and Madrid, it seemed, within touching distance of the top. Barcelona had actually played well until then, controlling the game and forcing their rivals ever deeper. Thibaut Courtois had denied García, Ferran Garcia had almost scurried clear and Dani Olmo might have done better at the near post, having been set up by Pedri and Gerard Martin. But now, this looked their entire world was crumbling around them. It two moments, they had been left on the floor.
Only that’s when this Barcelona team gets up again, and does it all over. And what followed, instead of their collapse, was a dominance so complete you could be forgiven for thinking they had given their opponents a two-goal lead just for the fun of it, so sure of their superiority. Not least because this has happened before: the two games against Inter, for a start. Atlético Madrid too. Even the Super Copa clásico had started with an Mbappé goal. Ultimately those two against Inter didn’t end well, of course; this though was something else, a storm unleashed.
It was also a picture of this season: Barcelona were superb; Madrid were mostly a shambles, totally overrun. No, there was no certainty that the goals would come and some chances passed by that might have been lamented, but when they did come they felt like the most logical thing in the world. Courtois saved from Lamine, Iñigo Martínez headed wide, and Courtois saved from Martin, before Garcia nodded in from the seventh corner already to make it 2-1 and start something Madrid simply could not stop.
Time and again, Barcelona ambushed Madrid, especially on the left; repeatedly, they ran beyond them. So much was happening, and all at one end. It was all Madrid do to kick the ball as far away as possible. And, failing that, kick Barcelona’s players. Most of the time that too was beyond them, unable to get the ball, left with two forwards hoping to ru once in a while, a defence that was overwhelmed and a midfield that simply wasn’t there. Pedri and Ferran set up Lamine Yamal to curl in a lovely and increasingly familiar equaliser,thatLamine Yamal shot going right into the far corner.
Then Mbappé and Dani Ceballos bumped into each other. It could have come to the sound of a kazoo or the crash of cymbals; instead it came with a roar. Barcelona were away again, Pedri recovering up the ball and immediately releasing it again. Sent racing away, Raphinha steered past Courtois. In half an hour they had given Madrid a two goal lead and then scored three themselves and they hadn’t finished yet, an outrageous pass from Lamine Yamal headed over by Raphinha and Cubarsí missing the target.
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Amazingly, Madrid might have levelled when Alejandro Hernández Hernández gave a second penalty. Mbappé had dived, but it was actually ruled out by an offside and just before half-time it was four. Poor Lucas Vázquez, a man forever targeted was hunted down again. Raphinha took it off him on the edge of the area and exchanged passes with Ferran, whose neat feet set him up to score. Soon, the olés were going round.
The storm clouds rolled in and out again and although this wasn’t the same any more and didn’t need to be either, Barcelona still looked more at ease, no one able to touch Pedri. A fifth from Lamine Yamal ruled out for offside early in the second half and when Vinícius almost escaped and sought out Mbappé a little while later, Cubarsí cut it out. Carlo Ancelotti’s side had a little bit of a presence now with Luka Modric and Brahim Díaz introduced at half-time and with twenty minutes to go, Modric set Vinícius running through into space to set up Mbappé for his hat-trick.
There was something about the goal that just didn’t make sense. Until then, Barcelona had been enjoying this, easing their way to the close and, rather than clinging to the hope of getting back into this, Madrid might have just wished it would end. The game, the season, the whole sorry thing. But now perhaps, with the shot count at 16-4 and the actual score at 4-3, there was something to chase, some hope to reach for. Yet it was Barcelona that kept on going, kept creating chances, kept making this fun. They got a fifth too through Fermin, but that was ruled out right at the end. Four would do for a fourth clásico win and league title.