The BBC flopped spectacularly, and the MSN shone, and that too with Lionel Messi hardly playing a hand. Barcelona utterly dominated Real Madrid in this not-much-of-a-contest El Clasico at the Bernabeu on Saturday.
It was a nice weekend stroll for Barcelona for much of the 90 minutes, as Luis Suarez grabbed a brace, with Neymar and Andres Iniesta, the three stars of the match, getting one each as well to help their team to a comprehensive 4-0 victory over Real Madrid.
In what was billed as the biggest match of Europe, one of them just did not show up on the night, while the other was just too good, turning on the style when they felt like to waltz to victory and open up a significant six-point gap on their rivals.
Real Madrid will now have to play out of their skins for the rest of the La Liga season if they are to pick up the title, because clawing back those six points against this Barcelona team will not be easy.
The scary part was that Barcelona dominated Real Madrid, and scored the first three goals of the match, without their talisman Messi. But then, when you have the attacking talents of Neymar and Suarez, it shouldn't be that much of a surprise, with the latter opening the scoring, latching onto a through ball from Sergi Roberto, before finishing perfectly into the bottom corner with the outside of his right foot.
Neymar got his goal off a through ball from Iniesta, and nearly got an assist on the stroke of halftime as well, only for Suarez to be denied by Marcelo on the goalline.
Iniesta would get his goal on 52 minutes, smashing the ball home after a nice backheel from Neymar, before Suarez added the icing on the cake with another astute finish on 74 minutes.
"We played really well," said one of the men of the match Andres Iniesta to Spanish television, after Barcelona completely shut out the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale and Karim Benzema. "I think having the ball, finding ourselves superior in the front, everything went really well. I think limiting Madrid's attack also helped and we felt really comfortable out there.
"To get a win here, we have to have the ball and we did that today and that made us really, really happy."
