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El Clasico in Spain always throws up talking points and controversies in abundance, as two of the country’s biggest and most successful teams – Real Madrid and Barcelona – go head-to-head to prove their supremacy over one another. In the build-up to this weekend’s El Clasico, we take a look at the 5 greatest moments that came in matches between the two sides in recent seasons.
5. Barcelona give Real Madrid the guard of honour
Barcelona and Real Madrid were to face off against each other on May 7, 2008, but the usual sting and anticipation that surrounds an El Clasico game was hardly present that day.
Real Madrid had already won the league before the game kicked off, and as they were stepping onto the field, the Barcelona team formed a guard of honour to salute them and their achievements that season. To further compound their misery, Real Madrid beat them 4-1, depriving the Catalans of an automatic Champions League qualification berth.
Xavi called the guard of honour, or the pasillo, as it is called in Spain, the most humiliating experience of his life.
4. Arrival of the magician
In the 2006-07 season, when Barcelona was ruled by the likes of Ronaldinho and Xavi, an unassuming 20-year-old Argentine made his presence felt for the first time, and surely not for the last, scoring 17 goals that term to become a regular first-team starter thereafter for the Catalan club.
Lionel Messi had been knocking on the doorstep for a few seasons, but there was no better stage for him to make his presence felt than in a match against Real Madrid. He did just that, scoring a hattrick at Camp Nou to help Barcelona to a fighting 3-3 draw against their arch-rivals.
There was no turning back thereafter, as the 11th of March, 2007 saw the rise of an heir to Barcelona’s throne.
3. Mourinho, Vilanova and the eye-poke
With Jose Mourinho, you know you are going to get polarising views. However, neither loyalists nor detractors of the Portuguese manager would have been able to find reason for his actions during a Spanish Super Cup game against Barcelona in 2011, when he poked then-Barcelona assistant manager Tito Vilanova in the eye while a scuffle ensued between the players of both clubs.
He then decided to make faces towards the Barcelona camp, and after the match claimed that he had no idea who Vilanova was.
Mourinho later came out and issued a formal apology to Vilanova, saying: “I should not have done what I did, obviously not. The person who messed up there was me.”
2. Ronaldinho lights up Bernabeu, gets standing ovation
The Real Madrid-Barcelona rivalry is pretty much as ugly as they get, and there surely is no love lost between the two biggest teams in Spain. Therefore, when home fans during a Clasico can put aside their hatred for their opponents and afford a standing ovation for a player of the other team, you know that they have witnessed something special.
At the peak of his powers, Ronaldinho was easily the world’s best player, and shows his dazzling array of skills and tricks in a La Liga encounter against Real Madrid in 2005, scoring a brace on the road at the Bernabeu as Barcelona beat their rivals 3-0.
Skipping past players with consummate ease, Ronaldinho scored two goals of great beauty, the second one prompting a standing applause from the admiring Bernabeu crowd, while the home team were handed a cacophony of jeers on their way out of the stadium.
1. Figo gets the pig’s head
Portuguese legend Luis Figo’s transfer and the events that followed it perfectly explains the intensity of the rivalry shared between the two sides. Five years after joining Barcelona, the midfielder made a surprise £37 million move to Real Madrid in 2000, earning mass hatred and hostility from Blaugrana fans who who thought that Figo had betrayed them.
Figo got his share of abuse from the Barcelona fans from time to time, but nothing would have prepared him for what happened during an encounter between the two sides in 2002 at Camp Nou.
Everytime he went towards the corner flag to take a corner kick, Figo would have an array of objects like coins, knives and bottles thrown at him. However, many were left in shock when a pig’s head came flying towards him.
Yes, a pig was decapitated, its head carried into the ground and thrown towards the man who Barca fans saw as a traitor.
The moment went on to become one of the most iconic moments in the history of the two clubs’ rivalry.
