“Nah, nah, it was quiet,” Marcelo grinned and everyone laughed. A few metres away, through the door to the left, Ernesto Valverde took a seat and came straight out with it. “Decaffeinated,” he said dead pan, the hint of a smirk of his face. There was a bit of a laugh then too. Everyone knew what they meant, the irony not lost on anyone, Valverde’s first word, the word of the week, sent right back at them.



Outside, the confetti had settled all around the Camp Nou, billions of bits of colour everywhere, and it was quiet now, midnight approaching and 97,797 people heading home, but still their minds raced and their hearts too, trying to make sense of it all, picking their way through what they’d just seen. “Bloody hell, what a clásico!” Barcelona’s manager said.

Well, quite.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Decaffeinated was the word, but it was wrong. All week, it had been repeated endlessly: Barcelona were champions and double winners already while Real Madrid were preparing for the European Cup final, happy just for no one to get hurt. There was nothing to play for, or so they said, but there was: for Barcelona, history called, the chance to complete a first unbeaten season for 86 years – and back when Madrid did it in 1932 and Athletic Club did it in 1930, there were only 18 games, so you could pretty much call it the first ever. With four matches left, it felt like only Madrid could deny them and they would do all they could. Besides, football tends to find a way, a momentum all of its own, and in a clásico there’s always something to play for.

So, they played – the way they so often do in this game, the match that always seems to deliver, even when it’s not supposed to. Set up to be “as exciting as a hospital dinner,” as David Gistau wrote, instead it was very, very tasty. Decaffeinated? Aye, right. “There was plenty of caffeine,” Valverde said. “Caffeine? It was pure taurine,” wrote Marca. They called it “war”; and “in war there is no peace,” insisted Manuel Jabois in El País, likening it to “fishing with dynamite”.

It was explosive, all right. There were 28 shots, chances at one end then the other, seven yellow cards given and a penalty not given, maybe two. A red card, a goal disallowed, controversy and confrontations everywhere. Sergio Ramos and Luis Suárez, Luka Modric and Jordi Alba, Sergi Roberto and Marcelo. Messi went in on Ramos, the world upside down. There was an argument in the tunnel as they headed off at half-time, Barcelona having just been reduced to 10 men and Messi recriminating the referee, and another one as they headed back out again at the end of it, Nacho shaking his head and muttering “unbelievable” at Gerard Piqué.

Barcelona fans celebrated their title victory in the moments before kick-off. Photograph: Pau Barrena/AFP/Getty Images

Which was one word for a night that ended with the players embracing, spent but smiling, the final score 2-2. There were four goals, all of them superb– one each for Suárez, Cristiano Ronaldo, Leo Messi and Gareth Bale – and enough to keep everyone going for weeks, AS suggesting that it bordered on the days of Mourinho v Guardiola. Not least when it came to the thing some of them love best of all: the referee. “It’s a good job there’s no VAR or we’d still be out there,” Valverde joked. In the first half Alejandro Hernández Hernández ruled out a goal from Suárez for offside and sent off Roberto for hitting out at Marcelo; in the second he didn’t give a penalty when Marcelo was fouled by Jordi Alba and didn’t blow when Suárez left Raphael Varane on the floor, hooking his ankle as he passed to make the second goal, later admitting: “It was a bit of a foul.”

There was a dignity in the way they competed, as if everything was at stake, not nothing

Above all, it was a bit good. “A mad house”, Marca said. “Mucho clásico, not much of a referee,” AS insisted. “Surrealism takes the clásico,” declared El Mundo. “Colossal,” El País’s headline called it, capturing it best. Because for all the controversy there was football too; the clásico it lived up to its usual billing again, if not the billing it had been given in the week before. The speed of it, the skill, the quality. The commitment, too. Yes, it was edgy at times, and there were complaints too, but there was also a dignity in the way they competed, as if everything was at stake, not nothing.

“It was a great game, with no one worrying about whether there was nothing to play for. Everyone who likes football should be happy, and the football is the most important thing – more than all the controversy some want,” Zidane insisted. The match that “didn’t matter” was tense, open, exhilarating, Ronaldo growing ever more nervous on the bench, players falling and hearts racing, Barcelona withstanding all the way to the finish when Nelson Semedo dived to head clear, safe at last.

The players embraced, and Madrid made way. Confetti shot into the air and the Barcelona squad did a lap of honour. Some headed back to the dressing room but they were soon back out for more. The stadium almost empty now, Piqué took the mic. “Seeing as we didn’t get a guard of honour [from Real Madrid], the staff should give us one,” he said, so Barcelona’s coaches lined up and clapped off the double winners, still unbeaten, that record within their grasp. “You only have to look at history to see how hard that is to do; there are only two teams that have ever done it [in Spain],” Valverde said. “And we’re the only team still unbeaten in Europe.”



Andrés Iniesta and Luka Modric show mutual respect for one another. Photograph: Bagu Blanco/Rex Shutterstock

They might even have won, breaking away to make chances – the “Alamo” in the words of Santi Giménez. Rakitic ran and ran and then when he had finished he ran some more, Semedo shot up the right, and Messi multiplied, Zidane admitting that Madrid had played better against 11 than 10. But a draw would do, the record still alive. “At this point, it would have hurt to have lost that record to anyone,” Valverde admitted. It would have hurt even more to lose it to Madrid. With 10 men, Barcelona resisted, and “to resist is to win,” ran the headline on the front of Sport, missing the opportunity to accurately apply Juan Negrín’s famous – and ultimately flawed – war-time slogan. “Heroic and undefeated,” read the cover of Sport.

The end is in sight now. For Andrés Iniesta, especially – and he wanted to hold on to it for as long as he could. Withdrawn after an hour, this was his final meeting with Madrid. “You think it never ends but it’s ending now. These are different games; there’s nothing like a clásico and I tried to enjoy it from the first minute. I’ll take it all with me,” he said, a little sadly, standing there in the tunnel, where Zidane stood and waited quietly in the shadows to embrace him.

Quick Guide La Liga results Show Sevilla 1-0 Real Sociedad, Girona 1-4 Eibar, Athletic 2-0 Betis, Celta 1-1 Deportivo, Villarreal 1-0 Valencia, Málaga 0-3 Alavés, Atlético 0-2 Espanyol, Las Palmas 0-1 Getafe, Barcelona 2-2 Real Madrid. Monday: Leganés-Levante.

Talking points

• I’ve looked at the players’ eyes and at their bollocks, which are red and white,” Joaquín Caparrós said. Which kind of suggests that they might be better seeing a doctor than a new manager, but at least Sevilla won at last. A questionable penalty, scored by Éver Banega, puts them back in contention for the final European place. Thirteen years after he was last in charge at the Sánchez Pizjuán, it was like Caparrós had never been away, leaping and bounding on the touchline, furiously chewing gum, seeking every advantage, however small and however sneaky, the fans chanting his name. “This place is the hostia [the dog’s bollocks],” he said afterwards.

• “Yes, we can!”, sang the Celta fans, precisely because they knew that already-relegated Deportivo can’t – not any more. It was derby day in Galicia and time for them to wind up their rivals, oléing passes, pleading for Depor’s next derby next season to be against their B team and campaigning for Depor striker Lucas Pérez to make it to the Spain squad. Which he won’t, of course, but he did at least get a little revenge with the equaliser.



• Something strange happened this weekend: Betis lost, and let in two. Not that it will stop them making it to Europe – although it did confirm that Valencia will be in the Champions League, despite them losing to Villarreal. A superb game at San Mamés, marked by the presentation of the One Club Man award to Carles Puyol and four shots that hit the bar, a couple of them threatening to break it, ended with a 2-0 win for Athletic that carried a hint of what might have been. “This could be a great team,” coach Cuco Ziganda said. With him, they haven’t been.

• Girona slip away, Getafe hang on. Could European football be heading back to the Coliseum?

