"Without Gol there is no Clasico" the billboards around Spain proclaim ahead of the season's first "match of the century." The pay-per-view television channel Gol TV has the rights to the game, and it's making sure everybody knows it with Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, its elected poster boys, towering over roadsides and adorning subway stations. And it's not joking about the privilege -- the signal will be shut off in somewhere near 1,350 bars nationwide that are masquerading as private homes to avoid paying a heftier fee.
Spain tends to get very excited over the Clasico. Last year, an apocalyptic commercial with lightning bolts and crashing thunder blared from television sets in the lead-up to the Camp Nou game. Its message was loud and clear: This was going to be the match of the century. As it turned out, it wasn't. A single Zlatan Ibrahimovic strike proved sufficient to give Barca victory in an otherwise largely forgettable encounter.
It was a far cry from the previous Clasico, when Barcelona came to the Bernanbeu in the 2008-2009 season. With four points separating the two clubs, Barca inflicted so biblical a defeat that Real didn't win another game for the rest of the season.
With Lionel Messi in fine form, El Clasico promises to live up to the hype.
Manuel Pellegrini, Jose Mourinho's predecessor at Real and now at the helm at Malaga, might allow himself a wry smile as he goes about his business this week. Two Clasicos without goals last season would have suited the Chilean schemer, as it would have handed the title to Real. As it was, Barca beat Madrid 1-0 at home and 2-0 away.
"It's a game worth six points," Ronaldo told reporters last week, alluding to the importance of the fixture.
After the weekend added 13 goals to bring Barca and Real's tally to 33 each -- with a hat-trick apiece for Messi and Ronaldo -- any notion that this La Liga season would provide a third contender in the title race was effectively sunk when Villarreal and Valencia tied 1-1 at El Madrigal last weekend. The draw left both sides eight and eleven points adrift of Real Madrid, respectively. Espanyol is in fourth place with the winter break approaching, but even the most romantic fans of the Parakeets are not singing about a European campaign in the spring. A goal difference of -1 suggests a striking deficiency in former Espanyol defender-turned-coach Mauricio Pochettino's squad.
This weekend only proved to highlight the dominance of Barca and Real. Almeria was Barca's victim on Saturday, although its eight-goal drubbing was not a major surprise. The coastal club has been in woeful form all season and coach Juanma Lillo was sacked in the aftermath. Real's 5-1 win over Athletic Bilbao was more eye-catching, even if it was the same result as the corresponding fixture last season. With Fernando Llorente now one of the division's most feared strikers and youth players such as Iker Muniain coming through, Athletic is one of La Liga's stronger outfits. Yet Real still won easily.
The title will be decided, as it was last season, by which team prevails in Spain's two-match mini-league. History favors the home side for Monday's clash. In 25 years, Real has beaten Barca in the Catalan capital three times. It took the legendary Quinta del Buitre, under the tutelage of Alfredo di Stefano, to do so in 1983. And it required the Galacticos of president Florentino Perez's first tenure to repeat the feat 20 years later. Four years later, Julio Baptista gave Real a 1-0 victory in the club's last title-winning season.
It will take a team of similar caliber to win the day on this occasion, and Mourinho and Perez have constructed one. Real remains unbeaten in all competitions and is scoring freely while conceding just six goals in the league. The blossoming of Marcelo and Pepe, and the purchase of veteran campaigner Ricardo Carvalho, has cured Real's Achilles heel, its defense.
But in spite of Real's ostentatious assembly, it's not accurate to label the match as one purely of cash versus craft. Barcelona's team of mostly home-grown talent was not cheaply convened. The likes of Messi, Xavi, Andres Iniesta were taught their trade at La Masia, the most expensive finishing school in the world game, which operates on an annual budget similar to that of Almeria's. Neither do players such as Dani Alves, David Villa, Seydou Keita or Javier Mascherano arrive in Catalonia for the cost of an airfare.
"I don't think there has ever been a Clasico with as much parity as this one," Diego Maradona told reporters when he sat in on a Real training session recently. "Barca is in a great moment and Mourinho's team is very solid. This game will tip the balance in favor of which team will win the league. It will demonstrate the reliability of Mourinho and the playing style of Barcelona -- the team that plays with most personality will win."
The two most highly regarded coaches of their generation, the two strongest teams in Europe on current form, and the two finest attacking players in the game: El Clasico promises to be a game worthy of its lavish publicity.
It might even prove to be the match of the century.
