Barcelona almost secured their 28th La Liga title by beating arch-rivals Real Madrid 4-3 in Barcelona on Sunday, May 11.
The Catalan giants thus moved to 82 points in 35 matches, which is seven more than Real’s tally. With three rounds of matches to go, the title is now sealed in Barca’s favour.
For Barcelona, Raphinha scored a brace and Lamine Yamal and Eric Garcia scored a goal apiece, while Kylian Mbappe scored a hat-trick for Real Madrid.
The visitors had taken a 2-0 lead quite early in the match, but Barca bounced back to score four goals in the first half.
Barcelona Forced Real Madrid Defence Into Mistakes With High-Press
Barcelona made a cautious start to the match, playing off a low block initially.
As Real Madrid were four points behind Barca at the start of the match, it was Los Blancos who had to push for a win. A draw would have been a fine result for Barca, but their shaky defence allowed Real to score two goals quite early.
Barcelona then pushed hard for goals themselves and applied a high press against Real’s defence.
This served a couple of objectives – first, it forced the Real Madrid defensive players to commit mistakes and second, it dragged Barca’s defensive line forward, which meant that their defenders were in a better position to play forward passes to their attacking players.
Real Madrid resorted to playing counter-attacking football themselves, but Mbappe was played offside by the Barcelona defenders on a few occasions.
On the other hand, Barca continued to slice Real Real’s defence open with their probing through passes. Frenkie de Jong and Pedri kept winning balls in the middle third with their pressing and playing accurate passes to the forwards.
Raphinha wreaked havoc through the left flank by utilising the passes played to the wide area on the left from the deep and Yamal started moving inside to the central midfield at times to help Barca attain numerical supremacy in the middle of the park.
Yamal also curled one in with his left foot to the corner of the net and defensive mistakes by Lucas Vazquez and Dani Ceballos allowed the Catalans to score two more goals.
It was thus a brilliant comeback by Barca and their cause was helped by the fact that Real did not have any of their first-choice defenders on the pitch.
Mbappe reduced the deficit in the second half to complete his hat-trick, but the damage was done by then.
Barca are now on the verge of completing a domestic double under Hansi Flick, having already won the Copa Del Rey.
Carlo Ancelotti’s Real Madrid, meanwhile, is set to endure a trophyless season.
Main Photo
Credit: IMAGO / ZUMA Press Wire
Recording Date: 11.05.2025