Real Madrid Isn’t Dead Just Yet

Perhaps the rumors of Real Madrid’s demise were greatly exaggerated. It was easy to look at the club’s ongoing war of the words with La Liga president Javier Tebas, as well as the two domestic losses that left the club six points behind Barcelona heading into Sunday’s first Clásico of the season, and come to the conclusion that Real was a club searching for solid ground. However, it was apparently just as foolishly easy to forget that Real Madrid has a lot of good soccer players. Sunday’s match, a tense affair that ended with a late Kylian Mbappé winner and a scoreline of 2-1 to the visitors from the Spanish capital, was a good reminder that Real Madrid is never dead until it is dead.

Real is more than capable of beating Barcelona on any given Clásico. That doesn’t make the ask any easier, but as Paris Saint-Germain showed midweek, Barcelona isn’t unbeatable, and it’s not a surprise that José Mourinho, one of the biggest tormentors of the blaugrana, figured out a way to negate Barcelona’s strengths and prey on its weaknesses. Despite Barcelona’s possession advantage (62-38 percent) and shot supremacy (18 to 10) on Sunday, and despite Mbappé’s opener, which was as much lucky as good, this was a sturdy performance from Real Madrid, and one that could serve as a blueprint for how to attack Barcelona the rest of the season.