This week's El Clasico will witness first Bale-Neymar duel

Neymar

The summer transfer window of 2013 was something that all football fans were looking forward to. And why wouldn’t they, as the transfer window was to feature some of the biggest names such as Isco, Falcao, Cavani, Mario Gotze, David Villa, Gonzalo Higuain and many more. But the two transfers that took centrestage were of PFA player of the year Gareth Bale and Brazilian wonder kid Neymar. Neymar was a player who was already on the radar of every club including the likes of big money spending clubs such as PSG, AS Monaco, Chelsea, Manchester City, etc. But the two clubs who were always the clear favourites were La Liga giants Real Madrid and FC Barcelona.

Much before his move to FC Barcelona, Neymar had already hinted about his final choice as he was seen praising FC Barcelona, their style of play and their star man Lionel Messi quite often in his interviews, and also expressed his desire to play with the 4-time Ballon d’Or winner. But the thing that kept Madrid’s hopes alive of signing the young Brazilian was that Neymar never ruled out Real Madrid of the race for signing him, and because of this Real tried every single way to lure him to Madrid.

However, Madrid’s hopes were almost quashed when Neymar told the media that he would be supporting Lionel Messi over Cristiano Ronaldo for the FIFA Ballon d’Or 2013, and even said that the former was a much more ‘complete’ player. All of the speculations and rumours came to an end when Neymar finally made his dream move to Camp Nou on 3rd June 2013 for a reported fee of €57 m.

However, just a few hours after his move to Camp Nou, it was reported that Real Madrid had made a transfer bid which was almost double of what Barcelona had presented for the Brazilian, by offering a total of over €120 m excluding wages.

Neymar’s move to Barcelona was without doubt a nightmare for all other clubs and the defenders who would happen to face Barcelona in any competition, especially to Real Madrid. But then Madrid did something that took away all the attention from not only Neymar’s move to Camp Nou but also of every other major transfer that took place in the summer window till then.

Gareth Bale

The recording breaking €100m move of Gareth Bale to Real Madrid. The deal was something that Real were looking forward to complete in the starting weeks of the transfer window, but Tottenham’s chairman Daniel Levy wasn’t letting go of his star player easily. Bid after bid was launched by the Spanish side but none were accepted and it was looking as if the move was not going to happen, a transfer that Real Madrid had to complete especially after losing out Neymar to rivals Barcelona.

But then Perez made an offer that was hard to reject, a move that would take Bale above soon-to-be-teammate Cristiano Ronaldo and make the former’s move the most expensive transfer in football history.

On 1st September, the bid was finally accepted and Bale completed his dream move to Santiago Bernabeu. From the very moment of the announcement of Bale’s recording breaking move, many football pundits and coaches started to criticize Madrid’s “mad spending” on the Welsh winger and even predicted that Bale wouldn’t be able to continue his fine form to La Liga and would turn out to be a “big flop”.

The topics of who was better amongst the two – Bale or Neymar, as well as their partnership and understanding with Ronaldo and Messi respectively, have been the favourite to talk about among football fans, especially Barcelona and Real Madrid fans.

Well, only time will tell who will turn out to be a better signing, but the main focus would be on the El Clasicos, the first one on 26th October at Camp Nou, where the “Bale vs Neymar” contest would be more focused upon than the usual “Ronaldo vs Messi” face-off.