Luis Suárez embodies Barcelona’s evolution in victory against Real Madrid

Xavi and Sergio Busquets pulled on fluorescent bibs, clambered out of the dugout and set off up the touchline together, greeted by a roar as eloquent as the wild, desperate way that Jérémy Mathieu had just hacked the ball up the pitch. With 50 minutes gone, it was 1-1 in el clásico but carry on like this and it wasn’t going to stay that way. Real Madrid had scored one, had another disallowed and missed a sitter; they’d ended the first half with nine shots and started the second half with a 10th, saved by Claudio Bravo. Gerard Piqué was holding Barcelona together but they needed control, which is where Xavi and Busquets came in. Or where they were going to.

Because then it happened. As Busquets and Xavi jogged up the line, a few metres in front of them, the ball dropped in a long, long arch, Dani Alves’s pass falling behind Pepe. Luis Suárez brought it down soft-footed, nudging it in front of him with his first touch; with his second, he rolled it one way as Iker Casillas rolled the other. The ball hit the net while Suárez kissed his wrist, turned and raced towards the corner flag, skidding on his knees and disappearing somewhere beneath Ivan Rakitic, Alves, Andrés Iniesta, Lionel Messi, Neymar, Mathieu and Piqué.

“When that went in, we left,” Pepe admitted. “The second goal killed us psychologically,” Luka Modric said.

There was still over half an hour to go, and the chase was on for a third Barça goal that would level the head-to-head goal difference, a chase that Luis Enrique admitted created conflicting emotions, simultaneously seeking control and seeking chances, but Barcelona had just won the match and possibly the title. Four points behind eight games ago, they’re four points ahead. There are 10 games to go and Barcelona play Valencia, Sevilla and Espanyol in a row, but Carlo Ancelotti admitted “it’s more difficult for us now”. El Mundo Deportivo described Suárez’s strike as “the goal that could be worth a league”; Sport called it “the goal that’s half a league”.

It had come out of nowhere. For 55 minutes, a Barcelona victory looked unlikely. This was a game that was chaotic and hard to analyse. By the end, Luis Enrique could legitimately describe the failure to win by three or four as a “pity” but he could also be thankful to have won at all. “I’m happy with the way we played,” Ancelotti said. Madrid were back but they were also beaten.

Writing in Marca, Roberto Palomar likened it to the scene from a B movie where a bunch of henchmen tell the bad guy: “Don’t worry, boss, he ain’t coming out of that explosion alive,” only for the hero to dust himself down and wreak bloody revenge. “Madrid pardoned them ... and paid for it,” ran AS’s cover, while Salvador Sostres employed typical tact and tastefulness, writing: “If Barcelona are Catalonia’s army, Madrid were [Franco’s] tanks rolling down the Diagonal.”

Barcelona had survived and emerged victorious but it was not the fact they had won that was striking so much as the way they won, the confirmation of a trend. If there was something sect-like about Barcelona before, some are losing their religion. Losing the ball too, their most treasured possession: Madrid’s possession reached 50% at one point and finished on 48%, more than in any clásico over the last five years.

Barcelona had sought control but lived in chaos; in fact, they had embraced it. They had counterattacked again, their style shifting: the team who were defined by their midfielders are now more readily identified by their forwards. The goals had come via a header from a set play and a long ball over the top. A brilliant long ball from Alves but a long ball nonetheless. Mathieu’s header was the ninth that Madrid have conceded this season; Barcelona have conceded just one, roles reversed. According to football statistician Alexis Tamargo, this was the first time since the pre-Pep era that Madrid started a clásico with more Spaniards than Barcelona.

“Barcelona won the way Madrid used to win, with the same cruelty,” insisted El Mundo, who didn’t say that then. “I never imagined I would see Barcelona win like this,” wrote Emilio Pérez de Rozas in El Periódico. Afterwards, Luis Enrique was asked if Madrid are more like Barcelona were than Barcelona are.

The debate continues, even in victory, and at times it is nasty, self-destructive and self-interested. Santi Nolla, a man whose bitterness towards Pep Guardiola is breathtaking and who never knowingly passes up the opportunity to stick the knife in, welcomed the change, pointedly describing this as a performance to “overcome the nostalgia”. The paper he edits, El Mundo Deportivo, lead on: “Faith, character and punch.”

“Football is not only possession,” Javier Mascherano said. It was a striking remark, breaking from the normal line but the word was “only”. The debate is presented in absolutes which are not always absolute, but the shift is significant. Luis Enrique said: “You have to have [different] resources; that’s very important. Our aim is to have the ball, to create chances and to defend a long way from our goal but your opponent plays too and we have to interpret what we need in a game. We scored from a set play [as well as a long pass], and that’s gratifying for all of us.”

The man who scored the winner perhaps represents the change better than anyone. Johan Cruyff explained he signed Hristo Stoichkov because he wanted some mala leche, or bad milk, in his team. Barcelona were just too nice. Samuel Eto’o had that too and this summer, one Barcelona director made a similar analysis of the current side. So too did Luis Enrique. Faith, character, punch.

Suárez scored his eighth goal in nine games; he has 14 overall this season, 11 of them in 2015. He is a hybrid, describing himself in his autobiography as a combination of Uruguayan and Dutch styles, but it is personality that defines him best. “He’s not just an old-style striker; he can also combine with his team-mates, he reads the game well and he doesn’t need many touches to score,” Luis Enrique said. “He also has the physique which is good for us and the character which is useful for a team like us ...”

There was a pause before the Barcelona coach added: “... which is colder.”

Far from La Masia, Suárez began on a strip of rough concrete frequented by rough characters they called the callejón, with goals painted into the walls and a women’s prison at one end. “I never thought I’d play in a game like this,” he said on the eve of his first clásico at the Camp Nou.

Talking points:

So, just the 32 pages of El Clásico buildup in Marca, then. The hype was as relentless as ever, albeit most of it had all the substance of a pot noodle. Sport ran a series of articles with a handwriting expert who, surprise, surprise, decided that Ronaldo’s signature proves he displays “false humility, egocentrism and sensitivity to criticism”, while Messi’s shows he’s “ambitious” and basically much more lovely. AS did the inevitable players’ wives video, asking “who wins?” And there was even a double page spread dedicated to what a load of chefs thought about it. Just in case you didn’t think publicity was overcooked already, like.

Karim Benzema, though, eh? Woof.

Athletic Bilbao and Barcelona have both formally requested, in writing, that the Bernabéu hosts the Copa del Rey final. Real Madrid, though, have not asked to host the final and don’t want to either. They have not said as much publicly but Florentino Pérez did say no when the Barcelona president, Josep María Bartomeu, asked him about it at the directors’ lunch before the clásico. Much is made of the fact Basque and Catalan fans will whistle the national anthem – and inevitably politicians are wading in too – as if it doesn’t matter if they whistle the national anthem at the Calderón or Mestalla. What Madrid supporters and directors really don’t want of course is for Barcelona to potentially win the trophy at the Bernabéu. The last time they did that, in 1997, the then Barcelona president, Joan Gaspart, got the club’s hymn played over the loud speakers. Four times.

Seven and a half years later, Fernando Torres scored a league goal at the Calderón, heading in a beauty to open the scoring in a 2-0 win against Getafe. Two set plays, two goals, and Atlético’s long run without a goal was over. The moment of the match though came from Uruguayan central defender José María Giménez, who blocked a low, hard shot at point-blank range by diving at it face-first.

After the game, Diego Simeone was asked if he would be watching clásico. “I’m more interested in Villarreal-Sevilla,” he said. He watched Sevilla beat Villarreal again, 2-0.

28 weeks later, Alfred Finnbogason scored. Real Sociedad’s record summer signing got the third in a 3-1 win over Córdoba (who finished with eight men), his first league goal of the season. Until now he had scored only two goals all year, in the Copa del Rey. Mind you, that was against the country’s best side. Ahem. Etc and so on. That’s four wins in five now for Moyes’ boys.

Granada’s Jean-Sylvain Babin played 90 minutes this weekend. Of course. He’s the only outfield player in La Liga to have played every single minute this season.

Results: Elche 0-4 Valencia; Atlético Madrid 2-0 Getafe; Rayo Vallecano 1-0 Málaga; Levante 0-1 Celta Vigo; Athletic Bilbao 2-1 Almería; Granada 0-0 Eibar; Deportivo de La Coruña 0-0 Espanyol; Villarreal 0-2 Sevilla; Real Sociedad 3-1 Córdoba; Barcelona 2-1 Real Madrid.