Thibaut Courtois aims brutal dig at Barcelona stars after Real Madrid win La Liga

Real Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois has claimed that Barcelona players celebrating their four-goal El Clasico victory “as if they had won the title” spurred them on to winning La Liga.

Barca defender Gerard Pique sent out a tweet that evening to confidently state “We are back” while Dani Alves claimed that Los Blancos were “lucky” to be ahead of the Blaugrana in the standings.

It was a somewhat bizarre statement, as Real Madrid moved 18 points clear of Barca this weekend by winning their 35th La Liga title with four rounds of games remaining.

Since their El Clasico victory in March, Barca have crashed to defeat at home to Eintracht Frankfurt to end their European journey while they have also fallen to home defeats against lowly Cadiz and Rayo Vallecano in La Liga. It followed on from the high of the victory in Madrid which gave the brief illusion that Xavi Hernandez’s side were now serious contenders again in Spain.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang scored the opener for Barca in the 29th minute in his first El Clasico fixture when he managed to beat his man at the front post and divert his header past the helpless Courtois from close range. Ronald Araujo was then left unmarked from a corner to double his side’s lead just nine minutes later.

Xavi’s Barca turned on the class in the second half and very easily could have won the match by six or seven if they were more clinical in the closing stages.

Former Manchester City forward Ferran Torres whipped a fine strike into the top corner just moments after the half-time break following a skilful assist from Aubameyang. The summer signings then combined to score the fourth when Torres played a neat pass through to Aubameyang, who beat the offside trap and looped a cute