Real Madrid Wins El Clasico, Leads La Liga

El Clasico

Real Madrid needed to win against FC Barcelona to maintain their chances to claim La Liga title at the end of the season. Vinicius 71′ and Mariano 90’+2 gave the precious victory to the locals against a FC Barcelona side that did close to nothing in the game. Real Madrid has a one-point advantage over FC Barcelona as both teams will battle for title. 

Messi was very quiet for FC Barcelona. The best striker in El Clasico’s history with 26 goals only had a good chance to score a goal and had no impact in the second half. Barcelona’s best chances to score came in the first half but the Catalans were not able to convert.

First win in last seven attempts

Real Madrid beat FC Barcelona at Bernabeu stadium for the first time since 2014. And their last win was in 2016 in Barcelona (2-1). On both occasions Cristiano Ronaldo had score. 

Real Madrid applied pressure throughout the second half and got rewarded with the goals in the last 20 minutes. After losing to Manchester City in the Champions League earlier during the week this win was very important for Zidane’s team. The French coach commented on a well-deserved victory:

Zidane on the game:

“We deserved the victory because of everything we did both defensively and offensively. The first half was even and our press up front was not perfect. In the second half we improved our press and we were better up top. We really pushed them hard and almost overwhelmed them.

These are three important points because it has been a difficult week and today we had the opportunity to change that. It’s three points and we regained the lead, but we’re going to have to fight to the end.
 
We’re happy because we’ve all shown that we’ve done very well. I’m proud of them because it’s not easy to win like this.

Our strength today was very important. The first thing is to defend well together and then we know that at any moment we can have opportunities to score goals. The second half was ours. We had a lot of chances to score and we netted twice.

The win boosted our morale. The game was an opportunity to change our run and in the end, we changed it all thanks to this week’s hard work. We knew we could play a good game out there and we did it. We deserved to win, but it was tough against a top rival. There will be tougher moments and people will try to knock us, but we’re used to that”.