El Clásico: Xavi’s Barça head to Real Madrid with unexpected optimism

“Losing to Madrid hurts but we’re closer to winning,” Gerard Piqué said at the end of the last clásico. It was a curious kind of consolation after yet another defeat knocked Barcelona out of the Spanish Super Cup, but this time there was something for them to cling to. That, at least, was the hope and since then it has hardened into something more tangible. The 282nd meeting between these clubs may offer an indication of how much closer they have come or how far they still have to travel.

Fifteen points behind, it is too late for Barcelona to win the league, the title in Madrid’s hands with weeks to spare, but maybe the clásico can become a proper contest again. Not so much on Sunday night, although that too, but beyond.

In that last meeting in January, Barcelona were beaten 3-2 in Saudi Arabia. The outcome was depressingly familiar for them, but at least it hadn’t been a drubbing: it had taken a 99th-minute goal from Fede Valverde to defeat them and at the point they had started to take control.

“Playing like this we’ll compete for titles,” Piqué said, while the Catalan daily El Mundo Deportivo led its front page on “They fall with honour”. Inside it declared “Barcelona are not completely back, but almost.”

Xavi Hernández, appointed two months earlier, said: “We were the better team in play and dominating the game. If you toss a coin and it comes out heads, no one complains, but it came out tails. This could have been a turning point in terms of the result, but it [still] is in terms of play.”

Some laughed at them. A lot laughed, in fact. Barcelona had been overrun in the first half and the bottom line was inescapable: they had still lost. That made it five clásicos in a row. They stood accused of celebrating defeat,