How recent Madrid-Barca rift ignites rivalry before Clásico - ESPN

Florentino Perez will not be going to the Clásico in Barcelona on Saturday. This time there will be no visiting president in the directors' box alongside all the usual suspects, from former players and footballing figures to bankers, businessmen and politicians. Joan Laporta, the Barcelona president, will have to find someone else to sit next to him. Unless he's got an inflatable Perez he can use? There will be no formal prematch meal, not this time — and you know it's serious when someone cancels lunch.

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Real Madrid's president took the decision because of a tweet from a Barcelona director, they say. And «they» here is not the club, not directly, and almost never is: these kind of things, which are most things, are better said by others, through the usual channels where someone else's fingers can get burned.

On Wednesday night during Madrid's Champions League win over Braga, when Vinícius stood by the touchline, faced an opponent and did a dozen stepovers without actually going anywhere, a Barcelona director who you hadn't heard of before but probably have heard of now by the name of Mikel Camps wrote: «It isn't racism. Vinicius deserves a clip round the ear for being a clown and a piss-taker.»

Camps deleted the tweet soon afterward but far too late, and then went silent. Not only is he a director, he is — get this — a spokesperson, but he did not speak and didn't tweet again either. He pretended it hadn't happened, because that'll work. 24 hours went by, and there was nothing.

Before Barcelona's game in Glasgow the next night, the Barcelona director Rafa Yuste was asked about it; it was, he said, a mistake, an unfortunate and unacceptable tweet