El Clásico Preview: Real Madrid – Barcelona; Saturday 2pmEST, GolTV

By: Isaiah | May 1st, 2009

It’s not often that the fate of the league rests with the clásico, but this year it appears to be that way. Up by 4 points on Real Madrid with 5 games to play, Barcelona travels to the Bernabeu in search of three vital points that would effectively put the league beyond Madrid’s grasp. Even a draw would dampen Madrid’s hopes, if not extinguish them like a loss would. It’s the “6-pointer”, the Game of Games, it’s the flippin Clásico Español!

Saturday. 2pm Easter Standard Time. Live on GolTV with Ray Hudson frothing at the mouth and Phil Schoen hardly containing his delight. In fact, I imagine that Ray Hudson is preparing for this game right now by screaming at his wife/girlfriend/random people on the street about the little magic man, [insert Messi, Robben, Xavi, Higuain, Iniesta, maybe even Robinho]. If I lived in Miami I would go searching for him. And I would buy him a goddamned drink or twenty. It’s not that I think he’s the greatest commentator there is – he’s not, that’d be Gus Johnson – but this is el clásico and it’s not el clásico without Ray Hudson firing up Ye Olde Hyperbole Machinne* and having a good go at being the craziest man this side of Grand Central’s Wu-Tang-quoting, slow-motion-Shaolin-kung-fu-practicing homeless guy.

El Clásico! Oh God I’m so hyped right now. I feel like I just chugged like eight Jolts (remember those?) and stuck a fork in an electrical outlet. This is going to be so awesome. A better writer may have made a more meaningful pop culture reference (do they have an app for that?), but I am not interested in such banalities in the face of el clásico. In fact, I’m not sure I’m going to get any work whatsoever done today because, well, because tomorrow is el clásico. Have I mentioned that?

Argh, Friday, why are you so slow?

I’m not going to bother recounting the various reports in Marca and AS about this or that statement made by Raul because the guy is a madridista through and through (despite his Atleti roots, I should point out) and the papers themselves are the same. No self-respecting blogger (is that an oxymoron?) can put much stock in such rags – and that goes for Sport and EMD, of course – so I’m going to go straight to the facts, Jack:

Barcelona are 1st in the league, with the 96 goals scored, 26 allowed, and 82 points. Biotch.

Real Madrid are 2nd with like, some other amount of goals and stuff.

How am I supposed to write a fair and balanced preview of a clásico? I don’t think I can, but let’s put this to a vote. You, the reader, shall decide. If you want me to put in the time and effort to really study Madrid and come up with something other than mental diarrhea, raise your hand. Anyone? No? Okay, so here goes the biased preview:

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, there was a team all dressed in white that couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, no matter how many ~~blaster~~ shots they fired at the out-spent rebels from a distant land. So, to make a long story short, Messi is Luke Skywalker and has a land speeder, The Yaya is Chewbacca, Valdes is R2D2, Florentino Perez is the sinister Lord of the Sith or somebody like that, Raul is obviously Vader, Casillas is an absurdly talented dark jedi with requisite mind tricks, and Guardiola (In Whom We Trust) is Obi Won. And Hleb is so General Akbar.

That. Just. Happened.

Actually, I can’t believe I just did that. I don’t really know anything about Star Wars, I just know that The Yaya doesn’t need the Force, because he IS the Force. This is what el clásico does to me.

Okay, so, the best offense in La Liga goes up against the 2nd best defense in La Liga. The best away team versus the tied best home team. Barcelona has 36 away goals scored and 16 away goals allowed while RM has 46 home goals scored and 20 home goals allowed. This page gives Barcelona the slimmest of advantages, statistically. That is a small part of how I see the game, but there’s a lot more to it than goals scored, allowed, and points earned.

Let’s compare their last 5 common opponents, which actually isn’t hard to do because of the scheduling shitfest that La Liga engaged in this year. So basically we’re discounting Valencia and going back to the Barcelona-Malaga game. Both teams won all of those games, so we’re really only comparing the scorelines, not the results.

Note that until the Valencia game, which comes after the Sevilla game and was Barça’s most recent away trip, isn’t included in this, but was be a 2-2 draw, ruining the clean sheets. As you can see, the last 2 games for Madrid have had some shaky defense (Sevilla and Getafe both scored first, you’ll recall), something that they can’t afford against the likes of Messi, Eto’o, and Henry. RM won’t see as much of the ball as they have been, either, since Barça will be looking to control that little spherical thing as usual. Defense by keeping the ball from your opponents, naturally. So Barcelona has the upper hand in terms of going into the game knowing they will be able to control the ball as they always do, unless RM wants to play a wide-open game, which they should feel free to try.

To the squads before breaking it all down:

Real Madrid: Casillas, Dudek, Heinze, Torres, Marcelo, Ramos, Cannavaro, Metzelder, Garcia, Van der Vaart, Parejo, Gago, Lass, Robben, Faubert, Raul, Higuain, Huntelaar, Saviola

Barça: Valdés, Jorquera, Henry, Xavi, Piqué, Iniesta, Puyol, Cáceres, Sylvinho, Bojan, Eto’o, Messi, Hleb, Alves, Abidal, Keita, Gudjohnsen, The Yaya, Busquets.

I’m not entirely sure how Real Madrid are going to line up, so I’ll steal Corey’s lineup from his preview. He’s got them lined up in a flat 4-4-2 (perhaps it’s more of a 4-4-1-1) that looks like this:

—————-Casillas—————–
Ramos—Metzelder—Canna—Heinze
Higuain——L.Diarra—–Gago—–Marcelo
———Huntelaar———Raul———

I believe that Guardiola is going to roll out this lineup:

—————-Valdes——————
Alves—Puyol—Pique—Abidal
—————-The Yaya—————
——Xavi—————–Iniesta——
Messi———Eto’o———Henry

and I really don’t see anyone being surprised by that, except that maybe he’ll start Caceres on the left or in the center to give him some reps before the Chelsea game, when he’ll almost assuredly have to take over for Puyol. Another possible back four is Alves-Puyol-Abidal-Sylvinho since we know we’re going to need Pique against Drogba on Wednesday.

I actually think the lineup I’ve suggested is our strongest possible, so RM is in for the best of what we have to offer, even if Puyol isn’t totally on form. Marquez has been casual recently, so it’s not great loss for this particular game. It’s in the CL, when we don’t have Puyol, that the acuteness of the double loss will be felt (speaking of which, what the shit, Puyol? Why did you get that yellow card?).

Here’s a bit of a 1-to-1 comparison, excluding the keepers:

Ramos vs Henry and Higuain vs Abidal: la banda izquierda of Barcelona and versus the right side of Real Madrid should make for extremely intriguing matchups. I can see Juande starting Sergio Ramos on the left side to combat Messi “switch-footed” as he did before, but he may opt for a bit more attacking power on the right rather than curtailing his offensive defenseman too much. That would create a slight imbalance on Barça’s left whenever S.Ramos when up the line a la Dani Alves on the other side. It would force Henry to sit back a bit more or to rely on Iniesta to clean up the good there, meaning a small hole in the middle of the field that Gago could take advantage of. If Henry is able to effectively keep Ramos back in his own half, then there should actually be more room for Iniesta to operate, moving Lassana Diarra and Gago around a bit more in coverage rather than tying up just one of them at a time. What Higuain brings to the table is the ability to play almost as a third forward alongside Huntelaar and keeping Abidal back. If Iniesta and The Yaya can keep the ball from reaching Higuain, that will force him to move farther towards midfield and derail many of his attacks, effectively making him a playmaker instead of a forward, where I think he’s much better. He’ll have a few runs at Abidal, but he hasn’t really encountered pace like he will, so it might take a bit for him to adjust and begin to cut the ball in for in-swinging crosses much like Diego Capel tried in the Barça-Sevilla game.

Xavi vs Gago and The Yaya vs Lass: The center of the field is, as always, the most important part for Barcelona. Gago and Lassana Diarra are going to have to step up and play the best games of their lives if they’re going to stop our General and The Yaya, who will be holding down the middle of the field like it’s his fiefdom. Well, folks, it is. The Yaya does not move to the ball, the world moves to him. But really, if Xavi is going to have a good game, he’ll have to better Gago and Lass, who will be attempting to cut off his passing routes and, more than likely, his ankles. The same is probably true of Iniesta, but it’s Xavi’s orchestration that, to me, is the most important part. The Yaya in the middle behind Xavi will provide both the outlets during moments of pressure and the beginnings of counterattacks. Having two defensive midfielders in front of Xavi and Iniesta is one way to go, but because there are few passing lanes available to DMs against Barça thanks to Xavi’s and Iniesta’s underrated defense. If Gago is forced wide to deal with Iniesta’s incursions into space, Xavi then acts as the fulcrum to pull Lass out of position and then Messi slips into the middle right channel, Eto’o begins a diagonal run perpendicular to Messi’s, meaning the defenders are trapped in between the coming pass and the hard-charging little Argie (Argie Chargie?) that can take brilliant shots off his left. If Lass doesn’t step up to Xavi and instead covers Messi, then the backline of Metzelder and Cannavaro have to take on Xavi by themselves, meaning Eto’o runs diagonally into the box to receive the threaded pass from which he can shoot easily or Xavi plays a quick one-two (wall pass) with him and is free in the box with options of shooting, giving it to Eto’o, or cutting it back for any of Iniesta, Messi, or Henry. That Chelsea was able to block these moves for 90 minutes is a credit to their individual skill and Hiddink’s tactical gamble (as well as highlighting just how much worse at flowing soccer Chelsea is and how deadly boring they are too), but Real Madrid, if they enter into this kind of a gambit, will lose. And they will lose big. Pepe has the physical size and talent to do the job, but Metzelder and Canna are not as good and will wind up fouling more often than not. It’s then up to the ref to call these fouls, but we’ll find out early on if it’s going to be a rough game or not.

Messi vs Heinze: To me, this is a fairly individual battle, with no corollary on the Madrid side. Robben can be incisive, of course, and if Juande goes with him from the beginning and he really is 100% match fit, Madrid really does become about twice as dangerous, but Robben is no Messi. No one is Messi. No one is capable of stopping him one-on-one, especially not overrated Gabriel Heinze. It should be no secret to any long-time readers that I’m saying this because I think Heinze is trash. I applauded his move to Madrid in the first place because I thought he would be shown as the incompetent player he is (rash, dirty, and spiteful at that), but he’s somehow survived despite his mistakes. He puts in the occasional good match (and actually seems to play fairly well against Barcelona) and that must reaffirm his place in the starting 11. Because nothing else can explain it. If Juande goes with Heinze on the left of defense, Messi is going to make him look stupid and will draw either a yellow or a penalty in the first half. Heinze has nothing on Messi, even with Messi’s current dip in form. Marcelo will have to track back on the left a lot to get in Messi’s way and that’s going to bring Alves forward without much fear, meaning our control of the ball will be almost absolute. It will be interesting, of course, to see Alves vs Marcelo, a duel of impish Brazilian who like to roll around on the ground a lot. And at least one of them likes grabbing their crotch and sticking their tongue out at Getafe players. Messi’s dominance of Heinze is, of course, being taken a bit for granted by me, but I just don’t see any other way if those two really do go up against each other. If it’s Sergio Ramos on the left instead of Heinze, I think RM will have a much better chance of slowing down the Barça transition game, meaning the above-mentioned scenarios of ball-movement will be harder to come by, but when the breakdowns happen, they’ll be more complete as Ramos and Heinze will be out of their elements on the wrong side of the field. Without a big, physical center back like Alex or Pepe, RM are going to suffer (yeah, blah blah Metzelder is 6′4″ but he’s not Pepe or Alex, both of whom are 2 inches shorter than Metzelder, but definitely bigger and more physically capable). Messi’s runs against Heinze will have to be stopped by Lass or Gago (whoever is playing on the left side of defensive mid) and Messi will either beat them, freeing Eto’o’s run from the shackles of Canna and Metzelder, or he’ll pass to Xavi who will pass to Iniesta, who can then take on whoever is front of him and dish back to Xavi or over to Henry. There are obvious holes in the RM defense, as I’m sure RM fans are thinking of our defense, but they don’t have Iniesta, Xavi, and Messi dictating the game. And we do.

Last time we played, there was no Iniesta and we ran out 2-0 winners. We will win again, I’m sure of it. Maybe not with a clean sheet, but we will not lose this game. We will score and we will take the game to them like they haven’t seen since the last time we played them. We don’t take advantage of bad defending like Liverpool (4-0), but rather, we make defending bad. Yup, that’s some hubris there, I know, but it’s not like I don’t realize RM is dangerous, especially in their home, but we are Barcelona and we are better than they are. And for proof of that, you can check the stats.

Official Prediction: 2-1 Barcelona, goals by Eto’o and Messi.

Remember, because this game is on GolTV, you can watch the game at many a fine establishment listed in the Where to Watch page. (ballbeav, I didn’t forget your email, I’m going to try to add those two places today or tomorrow)

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*No, that’s not misspelled. But is it irony that I originally typed “mispelled”?