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It's a league within LaLiga. It's vital to win at home, given what it means and to make the fans proud of the players. The supporters give everything in the stands, and you notice that on the pitch. Obviously, things have changed a lot from a few years ago until now, but for a player who understands what the Clasico means, that doesn't matter.

The competition with your biggest rival is always huge, and winning this game is one of the aims of the season.

Pep Guardiola, the man who turned Barcelona into a juggernaut of the modern era, began his coaching career in charge of the reserves; taking on the first team was his first senior coaching job, but he immediately proved worthy. Having been part of the team that won six LaLiga titles in the s, he would win 14 trophies in four seasons as manager -- a club record -- including a "sextuple" of trophies in the first club to do so and made history as the youngest manager to win the Champions League.

Against Real Madrid, he was almost flawless, winning nine of 15 games and drawing four. He'd lose just once in charge of Barcelona. Gaspart: When we appointed Bobby Robson [in ], a young Jose was his assistant. He came as his translator because Bobby only spoke English.

In any case, he was at Barcelona for a while and years later went to Madrid. Now he's a great manager, known all around the world. Mourinho's not remembered [at Barcelona] with much affection. At the end of the day, Mourinho left Barca and later ended up at Madrid.

He's a professional, and you can't hold it against him. He did a good job at both and wouldn't be mistreated if he came to Camp Nou one day.

Joan Laporta, Barcelona president , : To tell you the truth I wanted to surprise people [by appointing] a person that thoroughly knew and had participated in Cruyff's philosophy, which incorporates the genuine style of football which our model is based on. Straight away, Mourinho's people called me and were saying "I suppose all this about you wanting Guardiola is not true and that you want Mourinho.

The battles between Guardiola and Mourinho would be the stuff of legend: their first Clasico meeting ended to Barcelona, and while Mourinho would win only one game against Barcelona during the four years that the two managers went head-to-head in Spain -- a victory in the Copa del Rey final -- their battles would be legend.

Laporta: The only question [about Guardiola] was his lack of experience, but I wasn't worried about that. They told me he was absolutely ready, so I had a meeting with Pep and told him I wanted him to be manager of the first team.

Do you know what he said to me? The experiences I had with him were really awesome because of what he meant to me. He had a brutal conviction and confidence in our possibilities, both in what we were doing and how we did it. That made us believe from the first minute, and we were able to carry out what he wanted.

Altimira: Guardiola's great virtue was that he listened to everyone and later he would decide himself, but from the start he would listen. Zubizarreta: A clear example of [Guardiola's approach] was playing with a false nine. Before going to the Bernabeu in , he decided to play without a fixed forward, which rendered obsolete all the systems Madrid had prepared to win the game.

The plan worked amazingly, Barcelona won and that game will be remembered forever. Zubizarreta: The Clasicos with Mourinho generated a lot of tension. Madrid appointed him to try and put a stop to the way Barcelona were playing and winning after he'd knocked them out of the Champions League in at the semifinal stage [as Inter Milan manager]. After the Barca win at the end of November , things changed. It was as if Madrid had understood that the difference [between the teams] was massive and they started to plan for the games in their own way.

It generated a lot of tension, and there were some unpleasant moments. Sergio Ramos holds the unfortunate LaLiga record of most red cards for a single player 26 , and five of those were picked up in matches against Barcelona, making him even more of a Real Madrid legend. In a particularly nasty Clasico in , with Real losing in injury time, he went in hard on Messi to at least get something for his team that day.

He then fought with two Barca players on his way to the dressing room. If I hadn't "smelt" that, I wouldn't have been in the right place. Then there was this melee. Ramos confronts Puyol, Xavi is there, the two goalkeepers come over. Everyone's confronting each other. I tried to get in the middle of it, tried to break it all up, but it was impossible: there were arms everywhere. The only one that's not in the middle of it all is Iniesta.

I say to him "bloody hell, what are you lot like? Xavi, on the Champions League Clasico: Mourinho was provoking us so much, over and over again, that finally we senior players really wanted a response from Guardiola. When we watched his prematch press conference [Guardiola gave an explosive diatribe against Mourinho], we loved it and applauded him to his seat in the restaurant when he came back to the team hotel. Pep told us to "sit down and stop all that. It's impossible to discuss the Clasico, or the two teams, without mentioning Messi and Ronaldo.

Their head-to-head rivalry for nearly a decade in LaLiga was energizing not just for the Clasico but for all of football. Between them, they won 11 of the past 12 Ballons d'Or and when one was up and winning awards, the other had to be down.

Messi scored more 26 in 44 Clasicos, compared with Ronaldo's 18 in 29 and the number of LaLiga titles during Ronaldo's time in Madrid Messi had six, Ronaldo just two , but Ronaldo and Real did claim four Champions League crowns in five years. Regardless of your preference, the duo were equally dominant in this feud.

As football fans we've been lucky to live in the era of Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo together, even more so when the two of them were playing in Spain That game gave us the boost to win the league.

It was something of a miracle because we were nine or 10 points behind with eight games left and little by little we fought back.

That game was key. When I arrived as president, we had changed 18 players to change the feeling around the club, which hadn't won anything for three years. That game showed the players that they were capable of winning, of coming back, of competing with Barcelona.

Messi, though, was sensational. The whole stadium, and the presidential box, was vibrating. It's one of those games you remember forever Obviously when Real Madrid play, I've always wanted my club to win, but as a fan I've always admired great players.

Messi has been one of them. Josep Maria Minguella, soccer agent: We brought Messi to Barcelona after some sensational scouting work from some of my collaborators in Rosario [Argentina]. The story is well known, how everything happened, the problems we had closing the move to Barcelona, how in the final moment Carles Rexach saved the deal by famously signing the napkin at the Pompeia tennis club in the city.

I went because Portugal have always brought through really good players, but without knowing anyone properly. It wasn't like these days back then. Now you know everything before you even travel. We watched the game and a few players stood out, although none of them were well known. After the game, we went to the Portugal hotel and were dining with their travelling party.

There were a lot of players there who weren't known at the time but would become very popular, among them Thiago, Ricardo Quaresma and Cristiano Ronaldo. There are signs in the ground declaring such things as "Catalonia is not Spain. A factor which adds an extra dimension to these two colossal fixtures is the arenas in which they are set. Madrid's Estadio Santiago Bernabeu crams a little more than 80, spectators into its steep-sided stands, while the Camp Nou in Barcelona lets in nigh on , supporters in a ground level and file down into a veritable cauldron of a ground.

The atmosphere at either ground may be a little sedate on your average home game, what with both being a popular destination for tourists and casual fans, but come the Clasico there is barely a more vociferous support anywhere in the world.

Jose Mourinho is the most successful coach of the last decade, winning league titles in three different countries and the Champions League with Porto and Inter Milan.

Pep Guardiola has only in his fourth season as a coach, but he has already won La Liga three times and the Champions League twice. There is no love lost between them, with their beef stretching back to Mourinho's Inter beating Guardiola's Barca in their Champions League semifinal in and accelerating once the Portuguese joined Barca's bitter rivals.

Incredibly, Real and Barca have already met six times in this calendar year. In a hectic day period in the spring, they clashed in the league at the Bernabeu, Raul Albiol sent off , the Copa del Rey final Real Barca, Angel di Maria sent off , and in a two-legged Champions League semifinal Barca won on aggregate, with Pepe getting red-carded in the first leg at the Bernabeu.

Marcelo was sent off in the closing moments, and the final whistle saw an almighty stramash in which Mourinho was caught poking Barca coach Tito Vilanova in the eye. Real Madrid's match against city rivals Atletico is sometimes referred to El Otro Clasico , meaning 'The Other Classic' in English - a name which serves to emphasise its secondary nature in the scale of derbies. Interestingly, the use of 'El Clasico' to describe Real Madrid versus Barcelona is a relatively recent phenomenon, having only entered the mainstream lexicon of Spanish football in the mids.

It is believed that Spanish football took inspiration from South and Central America, where the term 'Clasico' is commonly used to describe derby matches or meetings between rival teams. Barcelona and Real Madrid are situated in different parts of Spain, so why are they rivals?

The organisation that unites ex-players from all FC Barcelona football teams. Summer Camp. Basketball First Team. Handball First Team. Futsal First Team. Roller Hockey First Team. Esports eFootball PES.

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