FC Barcelona mounted a historic comeback on Sunday, to thrash bitter rival Real Madrid 5-2 in a Spanish Super Cup final edition of El Clasico held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Culers couldn’t have been blamed for fearing the worst when Vinicius Jr. robbed Marc Casado of the ball in his own half and sent Kylian Mbappe off on a lightning pace counter attack which concluded with the Frenchman fooling Alejandro Balde and putting the defending champion Los Blancos up inside five minutes.
On 22 minutes, however, Barca wonderkid Lamine Yamal went on a typical slalom run of his own and slotted his perfectly executed shot past Thibaut Courtois to equalize.
Almost a quarter of an hour later, Robert Lewandowski beat the Belgian from the penalty spot after Eduardo Camavinga hacked at Gavi and brought the number six down in the box.
Raphinha’s head connected excellently with a Jules Kounde cross on 39 minutes to give Barca a two-goal advantage, before the Brazilian set up Alejandro Balde to secure a 4-1 scoreline at half time.
Barca came roaring out of the traps following the interval, with Raphinha scoring his second of the night upon cleverly dribbling on the other side of a set of hapless white shirts to make it 5-1.
And while Rodrygo scored the free kick awarded when Wojciech Szczesny was shown a straight red for fouling Mbappe outside the 18-yarder, the Blaugrana held on for a record 15th title in the competition and won back the cup which Madrid relieved it of a year ago under Hansi Flick’s predecessor Xavi Hernandez.
Through victory, the German who took over the reins in the summer has now secured his first title in the Barca dugout and will hope that the comeback is a sign of things to come for the rest of the season.
Barca thrashed Madrid 0-4 in a La Liga edition of the Clasico in late October, which put it six points clear at the summit.
A string of bad results in November and December means that they now trail Carlo Ancelotti’s men by five points and leader Atletico Madrid by six, with all the teams concerned having now played 19 games each.
Barca returns to league action with an away trip to Getafe on January 18 as the newly-crowned Super Cup winners.
Before that, however, it will attempt to advance in the Copa del Rey by seeing off Real Betis in Montjuic on Wednesday.
Tom Sanderson is a Barcelona-based reporter who covers Spanish football and in particular its two
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