Just like watching Brazil - why Barca's beautiful, brutal demolition of Real Madrid will make a whole new generation fall in love with football

Published 13:58 30/11/10

It took me right back to 1982. When, as a boy just about to start secondary school, I was left bewitched by a quite magnificent Brazil team.

Yes Barcelona were that good. Not eye-catchingly good. Not ‘they’ll all be talking about this tomorrow’ good.

No. They were so good in the way that you just had to tell someone. Anyone. Right at that very moment.

Which is why Twitter was so awash with hundreds and hundreds of tributes from hardened, cynical reporters and wide-eyed rookies alike hailing the performance of Pep Guardiola’s truly great team.

Premier League players were peppering the social networking site with messages simply made up of ‘Wow!’

This was no Manchester United mauling of Blackburn. No David Haye destruction of Audley Harrison.

In both those so-called contests one side arrived already knowing in their heads and hearts that they were beaten before they had begun.

Monday was different. In the eyes of many experienced observers, Real went into the match as favourites.

They had been remoulded under Mourinho. Marauding through the mediocrity of La Liga. They’d hit four in their previous game, the Champions League annihilation of Ajax.

And in the game before that they’d ripped the heart out of Athletic Bilbao in the League with another five.

Monday was different. The remains of Mourinho’s men were sent back to Madrid with a warning that they need to be better, much better if they want to break Barcelona’s strangehold on El Classico.

Guardiola’s men have now won the last five. And the next time you hear someone desecrate that overused word – ‘great’ – to describe a player or a team in football. Just remind them of what happened at the Nou Camp last night.

Because there was no weak link. No weakness and no mercy. Barca were a ruthless footballing machine with every piston working at full capacity.

It really was a brutal, yet beautiful demolition of a Madrid team that scored over 100 goals last season.

A team that had themselves scored nine goals in their previous two League games and, on their freescoring exploits this season have netted 33 times in 13 matches – an average of around three goals a game.

And yet Real – a team costing £300million, comprising some of the best players in Europe – were handed their backsides big style.

They were a Mourinho team at that. No side managed by Special One Jose had ever been beaten by more than three goals before in his career.

Monday night was different. By around ten o’clock on Monday evening that statistic was reduced to ashes.

Sky commentator Gerry Armstrong called it the finest performance he had seen covering the El Classico contest for the last 15 years.

Alongside him the great (I know, but he actually was) Ronald Koeman insisted Barca were so much better than the side with which he lifted four consecutive Spanish titles, three Spanish Super Cups, one European Super Cup and one Champions League.

They were Johan Cruyff’s Dream Team. The side that annihilated Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United wannabes. The side in which Guardiola himself played.

And yet this current incarnation were in a different class. In terms of passing, movement, ball retention, incisive passing, composure, skill. In every single department Barca 2010 were on another level.

This was better than the 5-0 shellacking by the Dream Team in the early nineties. And even better than the 6-2 humiliation at the Bernebeu two years ago.

It stood out because Real were supposed to be a better team now than the one that has so badly underachieved over the last years.

They were a Mourinho team. Supposedly battle-hardened. Tactically aware. And yet, once they realised they were having the bliss taken out of them, they resorted to cheap bullying, violence and straight up disrespect – as demonstrated by Cristiano Ronaldo’s push on Guardiola.

Panorama may have been pointing the finger at some of FIFA’s top brass on the other channel.

The BBC’s flagship documentary may have left some of the England 2018 bid team crying into their beer.

But it was Real and Special One who were left weeping at the realisation that, held up against Barcelona, they remain distinctly ordinary.

There are obvious questions to ask. Such as: What does it say about the strength of La Liga if Real can put so many of their opponents so easily to the sword yet get so venomously exposed themselves by Barca?

And how could Pep Guardiola possibly be under pressure at Barca when his side can produce what they did on Monday night?

But those questions are for another time. It is still raining platitudes on the greatest team on Planet Football.

Just as that Brazil side in 1982 seduced me into my love affair with football, so Monday night at the Nou Camp will entice a whole new generation.

Barcelona 5-0 Real Madrid - match report

Mourinho: "It's a defeat, not a humiliation"

Spanish press laud brilliant Barca and trash rotten Real

Barcelona v Real Madrid, La Liga - Picture Special

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