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Ibrahimovic volley gives Barcelona bragging rights
A Barcelona-Real Madrid game that veered from the brilliant to the banal, as is pretty much always the case in these contests, was settled 1-0 in favour of the Catalans by a great finish from Zlatan Ibrahimovic, following an even better pass from Dani Alves.
Real will go back to the capital content with their performance in all areas … apart from in front of goal. They will rue missing six or seven good chances to get something from a game that was pretty even, although that was partly to do with the sending-off of Busquets for a daft handball.
The result took Barcelona back top of La Liga but it obviously didn’t settle anything. What it did confirm is that Real have become a much tougher team to play against with all that new talent and that coach Pellegrini is on the right track. So they couldn’t get the ball off the Barcelona midfield at times? I can’t think of a single team that wouldn’t have had problems at Camp Nou against Iniesta, Xavi, Messi and the rest.
The Ballon d’Or will be announced on Tuesday and you can bet it will go to Messi, but after watching that match I was reminded that Iker Casillas and Carles Puyol deserve to be up there as well.
