Barcelona close to losing crown as Europe's BIGGEST to Real Madrid

Real Madrid take on Barcelona at the Bernabeu this weekend in what could prove to be one of the most pivotal El Clasico's in a generation.

Coming off the back of a gutting Champions League elimination, Barca could slip six points behind Real in the race for the La Liga title - and Los Blancos still have a game in hand.

Here, Spanish football expert Graham Hunter argues for our sister newspaper, the Daily Record , that Real are poised to overtake Barca as European football's super force.

Just in case you’re scratching around for El Clásico statistics before tomorrow night provides you with the chance to watch what will probably be the best football of the season here’s a couple of beauties.

There have been 233 of these blistering, bucolic, bruising matches in La Liga and the record stands at: Real Madrid 91, Barcelona 93 and 49 draws.

Now howdya like that?

You sit down to watch the Clásico with a packet of cheese and onion crisps and a nice bottle of Rioja and there’s only a 21 per cent chance of a draw. This game prefers winners and losers.

Better still, the goal average per match when Spain is divided between Castilla and Catalunya is 3.3.

Next: across the last 24 Clásicos there have been 15 red cards, 11 for Madrid.

Finally, when they play at home, as is the case on Sunday night, Madrid have 52 wins, drawn 15 and lost to the Catalans just 19 times.

But get this – it’s an 88 year history in this fixture and of those 19 Barça wins in the Spanish capital a whopping SEVEN have come in the last 13 visits to the Santiago Bernabeu.

It has been the ‘Cruyff’ era – just as much as when the late Dutchman played or coached there.

Since 2003, when his influence began to be felt once again as the football-philosopher whose ideas guided the President, the Director of Football, the coach and the players, Barcelona haven’t only won more trophies than Madrid they’ve lost just four of those last 13 visits to a stadium where they used to go decades without a point.

But it feels like change is in the air and, potentially, this is the match to be the weather-vane.

Cruyff’s loss is a sad one for the world, for football, for his family, but his absence isn’t what governs the change at Barcelona.

The club now has a board which has made peace with the Cruyff family and which is engaging in joint projects but which isn’t really promoting the Cruyff ideal of how to play very firmly.

As Luis Enrique departs, this is his last Clásico after 34 matches for Madrid, Barcelona and as manager at the Camp Nou, it looks certain now that the next coach, unlike the chain which links Frank Rijkaard, Pep Guardiola and Tito Vilanova between 2003 and 2013, won’t be a Cruyff disciple.

Of those players who came through the system when either Cruyff was the manager or his recruitment policy still ruled there’s now only Andrés Iniesta left.

Right now, and for the last few months, the football this Barça team plays bears very little resemblance to the version which made the club dominant when the Cruyff-Guardiola influences combined.

What with the fuss over whether Leo Messi will renew his contract, which runs out next season, the desire to make Neymar the team emblem and the over-emphasis on buying €40m players from Valencia and the lack of faith in promoting from the youth teams this is beginning to resemble the actual post-Cruyff period when he was sacked as manager in 1996.

The emphasis, back then, shifted to big money purchases, cash bonus incentives for appearances rather than trophies and after intermittent trophy success the trophy drought which followed, six years, seemed almost as if it had been strategically planned.

In other words, the club did almost everything necessary to undercut its own ethos, philosophy and standards.

This isn’t an identical time but there are themes re-occurring.

Thus there’s more at stake than three points on Sunday night, more still than simply the title.

If Madrid win, as they are favoured to do, then La Liga will be theirs for only the second time since 2008. A brutal absence for a club which now finds it simpler to conquer Europe than Spain.

However, you have to look at trends and indications and, right now, Madrid have begun to promote from within their ranks.

They’ve got ex players like Santi Solari and Guti running parts of their youth system, they are repatriating Raúl into the establishment and Zidane, one of their all-time great footballers.

There appears, despite Florentino Perez’s continuing obsession with marketing and Galactico signings, to be a clear development plan.

One with an identity which is clearly ‘Madrid’s’ and one where elements of what has made Barcelona both attractive and admired, as well as successful, seem to be being adopted.

Because of the way the fixture computer has spewed out the calendar this is the first Madrid v Barcelona since Rafa Benitez’s days were numbered and the visitors won 4-0.

That was a time, when Zidane was still indicating that he preferred to develop a little more in charge of the ‘B’ team and when the stadium administrators turned the post match music up to deafening decibels in order to drown out the boos, jeers, whistles and vociferous chanting of ‘Florentino Resign’.

From that day to this, what a change. Madrid are European and world champions.

They are in their seventh straight Champions League semi-final.

They are on the verge of being Spanish champions again.

They are faulty, this is not a complete squad yet and Zidane is still so new at his work that there will, inevitably, be some dips and some hard times to learn from.

But it markedly feels like something is happening at Madrid. Something positive.

Whatever else, this won’t be 4-0 Barcelona this time. And, feasibly, this might be the Clasico which everyone looks back on in four or five years time and say: That was the day when power was handed from the north east of Spain, in Catalunya, to the centre. To the capital.

To the Santiago Bernabeu. Don’t miss it, just in case.

(Mirror UK)