By Ian Palmer
The first El Clasico match of the season takes place at the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu this Saturday, October 25 with Real Madrid vs Barcelona in Spanish La Liga’s Primera Division. This famous and highly-anticipated showdown features the world’s top two soccer players in Real Madrid’s Portuguese forward Cristiano Ronaldo and his Argentine counterpart Lionel Messi of Barcelona. Barcelona goes into the game as league leaders with 22 points from seven wins and a draw while Real Madrid is third with 18 points from six wins and two losses.
bet365 soccer betting line – Real Madrid vs Barcelona:
- Real Madrid are favorites to win the match at 13/10
- Barcelona 15/8 to win
- Draw 13/5
- Goals Scored: The odds are 1/2 to go over 2.5 goals and 6/4 for under
Remarkably, Barcelona hasn’t allowed a goal against in league play this season as they’ve outscored their opponents 22-0. Real Madrid has a league-leading 30 goals with nine against. To make this clash even more intriguing is the return of Uruguayan striker Luis Suarez. Barcelona bought him from Liverpool of the English Premier League during the summer, but he’s been suspended since biting an opponent in the 2014 World Cup in July. Suarez scored 31 league goals for Liverpool last season and was named the Premier League’s Player of the Year.
Real Madrid, the defending European Champions League holders, is one of the hottest teams on the planet at the moment with five straight La Liga wins. They’ve outscored their opponents 25-3 in their past five league outings including 5-0 wins in their last two contests and are coming off of a 3-0 road victory over Liverpool in the Champions League on Wednesday
While Real Madrid boasts a team full of all-stars there’s nobody who shines brighter than Ronaldo. He’s at his goalscoring best at the moment with 15 league goals to his name in seven games and he’s added three more in the Champions League. Ronaldo has 50 per cent of his side’s La Liga goals this campaign. However, Real will likely be missing Welsh winger Gareth Bale against Barcelona as he’s out with an injury. Bale is second in team scoring with four goals.
There are plenty of other attacking players to make up for Bale’s absence though. One of these is French international Karim Benzema, who has scored at least once in the last three home games against Barcelona. Real is hoping that captain Sergio Ramos can return to action on Saturday since the central defender has missed the past three matches with a calf problem.
Barcelona’s last game was Tuesday when they beat Ajax of Amsterdam 3-1 at home in a Champions League clash. New manager Luis Enrique has seen his team win seven of its first eight games in La Liga with the other being a 0-0 draw in Malaga. Lionel Messi and Brazilian striker Neymar have combined for 15 of their 22 league goals this season and it’s going to be hard to find room for Suarez at this point, at least as a starter. Messi has seven league goals with Neymar at eight. Barcelona has always been a potent attacking team, but now they’re one of the best defensively as well. This certainly makes them almost unbeatable at this stage. They’re not totally impenetrable though, since they have been scored against in the Champions League.
Their defensive expertise will definitely be put to the test against the attacking prowess of Real Madrid and it will be quite an accomplishment if they can keep the ball out of their net. The same can be said at the other end of the pitch since Real has already allowed nine league goals against and it’s going to be tough to keep Messi and company off the score sheet. Messi managed to score a hat trick in Madrid last campaign and Neymar scored at home as Barcelona beat Real in both league encounters. In fact, Barcelona has scored at least once in every away game against Real since 2006.
There’s a good chance that both teams score in this meeting a draw certainly isn’t out of the question. These two teams have met 168 times in league action with Real Madrid holding the edge in wins at 70 to 66 with 32 draws. They’ve outscored Barcelona 274 to 65. At home, Real has won 51 times to 18 by Barcelona with the other 15 contests ending in draws.
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