Barça go knocking on wrong doors after clásico defeat that was too easy

When at last it was all over, Joan Laporta stood up, shook hands with Florentino Pérez and slipped out. For the second time in five days Barcelona’s president had sat front row centre watching things fall apart. He had listened to the Real Madrid supporters he had been so looking forward to seeing again launch into olés, laugh their way through ironic pleas for his coach to stay and invite him to enjoy Thursday nights in the Europa League, and now it was time to leave. He went down the stairs, past the statue of Sotero Aranguren and Alberto Machimbarrena cast in bronze and to the referee’s dressing room. There, according to José María Sánchez Martínez’s report, he “repeatedly asked for an explanation”.

He had come to the wrong place.

There was a moment late-ish in the clásico, about the time it felt like Madrid were just waiting for it to end and Barcelona no longer were – Gavi, Ansu Fati and Ferran Torres on and leading a rebellion – that Robert Lewandowski went tumbling in the area. But while that might have mattered and matches have turned on less, there were many reasons for things going the way they did – not just on Sunday when Madrid beat them 3-1 but beyond it too – and they weren’t to be found in the referee’s room. Nor even 25km west in Las Rozas, where more officials sit in their kit watching replays. There were at least two other doors to knock on first.

At the start of the game, Xavi Hernández had told his players to enjoy it; by the end, they had fallen silent and it was Carlo Ancelotti’s players who did, music on the stereo, Antonio Rüdiger on the dance floor. There had been times when they had enjoyed it on the pitch too, maybe even a little too much. Look at the stats and this was one match; look at,