Much at stake as El Clasico takes centre stage

Soccer Angles:Tonight's vital game will give the winner the edge in the race for the league title

REAL MADRID, anyone? Play in white? Quite good now and then?

It says everything about Barcelona’s majestic display at Camp Nou on Tuesday night, and the global reaction to it, to the club, to Lionel Messi and to the whole idea of what has been assembled under Pep Guardiola, that 48 hours later Real Madrid felt the need to point out that it is they who are top of La Liga, not Barcelona.

It may have taken Real 48 hours to catch breath but once they did it was to state that they have played 15 La Liga matches at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium this season and won, well, let’s not be shy, 15. They have scored 50 goals in the process. Real Madrid, to quote the club’s official website, are “soaring” at home.

The trouble for Real is that the 16th team to visit the Bernabeu are Barcelona. And they arrive tonight. After what they did to Arsenal home and away, it could be said Barcelona know a bit about this soaring business too.

It’s probably worth reminding Real that Barca won La Liga by nine clear points last season, scoring 105 times. Then they won the Spanish Cup, then the European Cup. On their way to the La Liga title Barca went to the Bernabeu last May and won 6-2, one of those results that will resonate for years.

Disorientated by blow after blow, Real went to Valencia the following week and lost 3-0. Then they lost at Villareal, at home to Mallorca and on the season’s final day, at Osasuna, who consequently avoided relegation.

You wonder how closely Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka and Xabi Alonso were monitoring this. You wonder if the club website used the word “imploding”.

It shows you where Real Madrid were. Something had to be done and of course president Florentino Perez returned to the club with bank loans of staggering proportions.

That in turn meant last summer’s spotlight did not linger on Barca’s achievements but on Real’s new signings. And that irritated Catalonia.

The tension between the regions is often commented upon. This is because it matters daily and finds its ultimate sporting expression in El Clasico. It is not an invention.

But currently what has almost usurped that socio-political dimension is the football, pure football as espoused by FC Barcelona.

Where Guardiola, Messi and Xavi are concerned, we have reached a land littered with comparisons: as good as Maradona, as good as Zidane, as good as yesterday, as good as even the great Real Madrid.

What this does to a peacock club like Real must be troubling. At the beginning of this decade it was all about them once again. In 2000 they won the European Cup in Paris against Valencia, two years later it was at Hampden Park against Bayer Leverkusen.

This was the ninth supreme continental triumph. Real Madrid were the planet’s club. One year later they signed the most famous footballer on it, David Beckham, and headed for the Far East to spread their fame. Money was to breed money.

Barcelona, meanwhile, were groping around. They won La Liga in 1999 but by 2003 finished sixth. Valencia and Deportivo La Coruna were surpassing them.

Barca, too, had gone for Beckham, but lost out. There is a theory that in bringing Ronaldinho from Paris St-Germain instead, Barca started down a different path that led them to today.

There may be some truth in that but we can also see that Barca’s academy has simultaneously churned out a dazzling array of talent. Xavi and Andres Iniesta would be enough on their own but for Carles Puyol, Gerard Pique, Bojan, Busquets and Messi – among others – to be educated in the same school is something else. Guardiola was another who went the whole way through. That is the foundation of the modern Barca.

In Madrid there is not the same system. Yet they have also been the game’s phenomenon and can be again. This has been a difficult first season for the New Galacticos, who don’t like that tag. They have been undone against Lyon in the Champions League and lost the first Clasico of the season in Camp Nou.

If they are able to recruit Jose Mourinho then next year we will once again be glancing beyond Barcelona to see the fuss over to the west.

A home victory tonight would be a significant step towards a third Real title in four seasons – though domestic success is never the sole benchmark at the club. It would put a spring back in the Whites’ step though, might justify a few salaries.

Even if Tiger Woods is interviewing waitresses on another channel it promises to be an unmissable event. Both teams are on 77 points, Real are ahead courtesy of a goal difference of just one. It is a fixture that will make La Liga glow afresh in a week when Barcelona has re-stated Spain’s importance as a football country.

There are concerns about La Liga in general. The gap to third placed Valencia is an embarrassing 21 points leading to the “Scotland with sunshine” critique. And this will be a sixth consecutive season when one of the big two wins the title – and they will probably do so for another few seasons given Spain’s economics.

But those are details that will be trodden underfoot in the rush to see tonight’s match at the Bernabeu. The world is waiting.

Young players carry big load 

ANOTHER Champions League game, another gamble. Last week it was Arsene Wenger and Cesc Fabregas, this week it was Alex Ferguson and Wayne Rooney.

Both worked up to a point. Fabregas scored and led his team to a draw against Barcelona, Rooney set up Darron Gibson for the first against Bayern Munich and was a pre-occupation for the visiting defence until he started limping 10 minutes or so before half-time.

But both managers have to deal with the fitness consequences, one of which could be that Chelsea win the Premier League.

Fabregas will play no further part this season, and Rooney is unavailable for the trip to Blackburn tomorrow.

Surely he should not have made it past half-time.

Blackburn is a game United would be confident of winning were Rooney in the team.

Dimitar Berbatov does not inspire the same feeling and we could well see Federico Macheda by the end of the 90 minutes.

United must win but even if they do we are asking fresh questions about the true strength of their squad. That once again provokes a further question about the true strength of the Premier League. It has been a week for such questions.