Sunday’s game between Real Madrid and Barcelona has been the talk of the town. In Europe, Asia, Africa and Americas football fans can’t wait to see how the first El Clasico would look like without the two best and famous footballers in the world.
Games between the two clubs have been the fixture’s overriding image over the past decade. It is not only the meeting of the two biggest clubs in Spain, and perhaps the world, but also a duel between the game’s greatest players.
Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have dominated this fixture. But on Sunday, for the first time since December 2007, a Clasico clash will start without either of the two superstars.
Julio Baptista scored the winner at Camp Nou in that 2007 clash as Real Madrid claimed a victory in a Clasico played just two days before Christmas. Sergio Ramos was the only player on the pitch from either side who will be involved on Sunday.
Messi missed out through injury, as he will this time. The Argentine attacker had lit up the previous season’s corresponding fixture with a wonderful hat-trick in a 3-3 draw at Camp Nou, his first at home.
Ronaldo would not arrive at Real Madrid until 2009 (below), beaten by Messi and Barcelona in his final game for Manchester United as Pep Guardiola’s side won the Champions League in Rome and with it, the treble.
The previous year, the Portuguese had claimed his first European Cup as United defeated Chelsea in Moscow and he went on to win his first Ballon d’Or. The rivalry had already started before his arrival at the Santiago Bernabeu.
Ronaldo’s world-record €94m signing in 2009 was part of a huge investment by returning president Florentino Perez and the aim was to shift the power back towardsReal after Barca’s treble-winning campaign.
Over the next few years, there were epic meetings between the two, although Messi and Barca continued to dominate at first – even after the arrival as Jose Mourinho as Madrid coach.
Ronaldo and Real were thrashed 5-0 by Messi and Barca in a Clasico clash at Camp Nou in 2010 (below), before four meetings in the space of 17 days at the end of the season which changed this fixture forever.
There was a 1-1 draw in La Liga in which both Ronaldo and Messi scored and four days later, the Portuguese headed the only goal to give Real a 1-0 victory in the Copa del Rey final at Mestalla.
The Champions League semi-final, however, belonged to Messi. The Argentine scored two wonderful goals after Pepe had been sent off and in the final, Barca went on to beat Manchester United at Wembley.
In the following season, Mourinho’s Madrid broke Barca’s run of successive titles and Ronaldo netted the all-important winner in the Clasico at Camp Nou, his “calma” gesture to the home fans going on to become one of the fixture’s iconic images.
But there have been many more. Messi holding his shirt up to the Bernabeu after a winner in added time in 2017 was another and the Catalans have continued to have more success in this fixture domestically, even with Madrid and Ronaldo winning Champions Leagues in recent seasons.
Messi has a record 26 Clasico goals, while Ronaldo hit 18 before his summer switch to Juventus. And between them, the Argentine and the Portuguese have claimed the past 10 Ballons d’Or. Five apiece.
On Sunday, Messi misses out with an arm fracture and with Ronaldo no longer around, a Clasico clash will take place without either of the two for the first time in over a decade.
And in December, the Ballon d’Or is set to be won by a different player, with the two Clasico rivals of years gone by not among the favourites to claim the individual award.
Even though Messi will be back, it is the end of an era in the Clasico and a glimpse into the future without the game’s two global superstars, with both men now in their 30s.
For a decade, their presence in Barca-Madrid meetings made this fixture fascinating and without these two, something will be missing. But it is still the Clasico…