The last time Barcelona met Real Madrid, Gerard Piqué sat on the Santiago Bernabéu bench muttering darkly as midnight approached. “These guys are leading us a dance,” he repeated, watching from the shadows as Barça collapsed to a 5-1 aggregate defeat in the Spanish Super Cup. Neymar had gone and hope had gone with him. Madrid had won a third European Cup in four years, had claimed the league title too – their second in eight years – and were talking about a new era, where they would dominate. Barça looking on as their rivals collected another trophy, feared they might be right. “For the first time in the nine years I’ve been here, I feel inferior to them,” Piqué said.

It was 16 August; four months on, things feel rather different.

Piqué knows better than anyone that a lot has happened since then. On 1 October, he was among the first to vote in a referendum on Catalan independence that was declared illegal and repressed; that afternoon, his team played Las Palmas before an empty Camp Nou, closing the doors in protest. He was among the few who did not want to play, voice breaking, tears in his eyes post-game. On Thursday, elections in Catalonia did not provide a solution; two days on comes the clásico as Madrid and Barcelona meet. They say politics and sport should not mix but they do. Piqué shows that. So, especially, does this match. The context is unavoidable, even if that is all it is.

On Friday, Barcelona’s manager, Ernesto Valverde, was asked about the elections and the atmosphere in Madrid. “It’s been a month or so without a question about that; I’ve missed it,” he said, joking. Asked again about the elections, he replied: “We’re a football club; we want to make all our fans happy, whatever they voted yesterday.”

This season they have done just that – more so than anyone dared suspect in mid-August. The pressure was on them then; now, it was put to Valverde, it is Madrid who are under pressure. “We both are,” he said, “but it is true that maybe they are a little more obliged to win.”

Madrid come into the clásico as recently crowned world champions but they also come into it in need. Barcelona are 11 points clear of their rivals at the top of the table. Madrid have a game in hand, having missed their league meeting with Leganés while in Abu Dhabi last week. “We want to win to draw closer to them in the table,” Luka Modric said.

A lot has happened, that is for sure. “If you’re going to think about what’s going to happen, why would you think things would go badly?” Valverde asked but many thought that. Piqué felt inferior for the first time and he was not alone. Barcelona were in crisis and rarely have Madrid appeared such clear favourites for the title. Instead, it is Barcelona in a commanding position.

“At that point we had just lost a player who was very important to us and we’d suffered a bad result,” Valverde said. “But, bit by bit, the team has improved and the results have allowed us to be first. The team is the same, but the circumstances have changed.”

There was something telling in the way he responded to another question about Piqué, the man for whom this game has a special meaning, well beyond the pitch, and the man the Bernabéu is most likely to turn on – even if he did once say that whistles from fans there sound like a “celestial choir” to him. “He’s calm,” Valverde said, “like me.”

That tranquillity, the ease with which he cuts through the nonsense, has allowed him to guide Barcelona through a crisis that might have sunk others. Barcelona kept on winning, even if they did not always convince. Since that Bernabéu dance, they have played 24 times and not lost. In the meantime Madrid have slipped away. Beaten by Betis, beaten by Girona, held four times, they have slipped behind Atlético and Valencia too.

Zinedine Zidane has attributed the drop in results as a consequence of chances missed and little more – “sometimes the ball doesn’t want to go in,” he says – and he certainly has a point even if the problems are a little more profound. “It’s not always easy to feel motivated, especially after triumphs,” Toni Kroos said.

This time there should be no such problem. “I’m sure it will be the hardest game of the season – but we like that,” Zidane said, and the evidence suggests that he is right. “We’re ready,” he added.

He has Gareth Bale back at last and Cristiano Ronaldo trained with the rest of the team after three days alone in the gym. “He’s fine,” the coach said. Valverde agreed. “He’ll play; he’s important.”

For the Barcelona manager, the concern is the pace and pressure he is convinced Madrid will apply, pressing high and not allowing his side out. There are lessons to be learned from the Super Cup, despite the shift since then. “It’s one thing seeing what they have done against other teams but you have to see what they have done when the team in front of them is you,” he said. “Just when you think you’re at your best is when they hit you.”

That blow is one they must avoid but it is Madrid for whom any blow could be a knockout. This is huge not only because the clásico always is but because of the circumstances.

The debate that opened the week focused on whether Barcelona should give Madrid a guard of honour following the World Club Cup. “It really doesn’t interest me at all,” Zidane said. Valverde added: “The guard of honour seems to me to have lost the essence it had a few years ago and I wouldn’t want to do it or for anyone to do it for me any more.”

The debate that has closed the week has focused on whether this game may decide the league title, even as early as this. No one has ever turned around such a deficit at this stage.

“Whatever happens, we will keep on working and there will be a long way to go,” Zidane said. “This game is not going to change anything, whoever wins.”

Valverde was again in agreement. “You can’t waste your time thinking about what will happen if we lose, or win or draw,” he said, offering up a timely reminder that while these teams eclipse all others and this game does too, there is more to the league than them. “Atlético are just six points behind; lose and it could be three and, anyway, there’s always an exception. Nothing’s written until the end.”