La Liga Hangover: Barca Should've Won the Battle, and Now Madrid Can Win the War

Who else but him? No, not him or him. Not Neymar or Luis Suarez, either. Not Luka Modric or Andres Iniesta, or Gareth Bale or Karim Benzema, or Ivan Rakitic or Marcelo, or Gerard Pique or Lucas Vazquez. No, who else but Sergio Ramos? 

As the Real Madrid captain stormed toward the corner flag early on Saturday evening, head down and arms out, team-mates roaring behind him and Dani Carvajal preparing to give the bird to the Camp Nou, it all seemed so obvious. A set piece, a clock running out, a big game, a deficit and a Ramos: we should have known. But not just us; Barcelona should have known, too.

This is what Ramos does. Atletico Madrid know about it all too well and so do Sevilla. The man whom it just had to be is the scorer of that goal in Lisbon in 2014; the scorer of those goals in Munich to get them there; the scorer of the all-important opener in Milan this year; the scorer of 93rd-minute equaliser in Trondheim after that. 

This wasn't his biggest, not quite, but it was big. How big will be determined in due course, but this was a battle Barcelona should've won. Now Madrid can win the war. 

When Luis Enrique watches the footage again, assuming he has the stomach for it, he'll want to kick Arda Turan with enough venom to send him back to the Vicente Calderon. "The instructions were very clear," the Barcelona manager said post-game. "Don't commit fouls, especially when Madrid players have their backs to goal." 

When Turan fouled Marcelo in the 89th minute of Saturday's Clasico with the score at 1-0, the Madrid left-back was isolated on the sideline and with his back to goal, surrounded by the Turk, Javier Mascherano and Lionel Messi. No one had been so backed into a corner since the "disaffected" ahead of an election, but still Turan couldn't help himself and hacked the Brazilian's ankles anyway. As far as disobedience goes, it was edging into Ferris Bueller territory. 

But Lucho's fury won't be limited to Turan. Quite how Ramos—possibly the biggest set-piece threat in the country—was allowed a free run and jump in the middle of a packed penalty area will have the Barcelona boss headed for his pharmacist.

For Ramos, though, that run and jump had him headed for the corner flag and a possibly iconic image in the process. That run and jump also has Real Madrid headed for the one they want this year, the one that's eluded them for too long. A point kept them six points clear, and six points is big. Everyone knows it, too. 

"We kept going, and the heart of the team stood out again," said Real Madrid manager Zinedine Zidane afterward, per ESPN FC's Dermot Corrigan. "After what we have achieved together, we believe until the end. ... We got a point and we keep picking them up."

From Zidane, such words pointed to a conviction that is building in Madrid. They've now gone 33 unbeaten in all competitions and haven't lost in the league in nine months. You sense this is a team that know they're going somewhere, that is believing they'll always find a way. By contrast, Barcelona need to start finding one, and quickly. 

"[Now there is] a solid leader [at the top of the table] who don't slip up. The only chance we have is to keep winning games and put pressure on them. ... We need to improve," Luis Enrique said. But that's the thing: they did, they had. Massively. 

After finding out a weekend earlier from Real Sociedad that their own medicine tastes like cough syrup brewed in a roadside urinal, Barcelona on Saturday decided it was better to administer it than drink it.

For large stretches at the Camp Nou, Barcelona looked something like Barcelona again. Nobody embodied that more than Sergio Busquets, who remembered that lacking a dash of pace and having a boring haircut are no obstacles to being one of the finest footballers in the world, no matter what Adidas' promotional material might tell you. 

Two of Barcelona's best chances had their origins in Busquets' one-touch passing. The first came on nine minutes when he released Messi, Neymar and Suarez on Madrid's defence, the move resulting in an acrobatic shot from Sergi Roberto. The second saw Neymar wind up with the best chance of the game that he should have buried but missed. 

Busquets also majestically took down Modric and Cristiano Ronaldo with a single tackle in the opening minutes. It was tenpin bowling at its finest when closing out a spare, and if that wasn't good enough, a slick turn in the second half left Isco with rubber-neck whiplash. 

It helped Busquets immeasurably that Iniesta returned on Saturday. As the 32-year-old warmed up along the sideline at the beginning of the second half, "Iniesta, Iniesta" rang around the Camp Nou. It might have been the loudest the stadium got at any point; those in the stands really wanted him, and he soon showed why. 

From the moment of Iniesta's introduction on the hour mark, Barcelona for 20 minutes seized control in a way they haven't for weeks. Immediately he was everywhere, receiving and passing almost every ball, always there as an option, giving Busquets someone to play off. Luis Enrique will need to make sure Andre Gomes, Denis Suarez and Turan buy the DVD. 

No moment better summed up the genius of Iniesta than the one right on 81 minutes, when he split four Madrid players with a single 20-yard pass to tee up Messi. The Argentinian might have pulled his shot wide, but somewhere, that will have mattered little for Ray Hudson—he still would have been having a crisis. 

Luis Enrique recognised that this was more like it. "We were able to find our players much more [in the second half], we created chances," he said. Iniesta had brought back some of their identity, and that matters.

"If we recover our style, which we in part recovered today, we're unstoppable, and we can turn things around," said Pique, per Sport.  

Pique's use of "recover" pointed to a recognition within that something had been lost recently: the ball control, the pressing, the strength of the system. Saturday saw a re-emergence of some of that. Barcelona remembered who they are, with perhaps the only concern being Luis Suarez's ongoing lack of form despite his goal to open the scoring. 

The Uruguayan wasn't the only big-name forward to struggle at the Camp Nou. Ronaldo was limited to very few threatening moments, and Benzema took the Mannequin Challenge a little too far. And yet, this is the part of Madrid that's impressive at the moment: It's not all falling on one or two individuals.

A theme of Madrid's season to date has been the sharing of the workload and the evenness in contribution, and on Saturday, Zidane got that again.

In defence, Raphael Varane had his best game for months, routinely breaking up Barcelona attacks and operating as the supreme sweeper his talent has always had him capable of being. In the middle, Mateo Kovacic was bright again with his surging runs, and Vazquez was excellent drifting from flank to flank and gave a torrid time to Roberto at right-back.   

According to Opta, Madrid have never lost a game when Vazquez starts. Before Saturday, the team's record read 17 wins and two draws with the academy product in the XI. That's now 17 and three. It says much about what he offers and how his industry helps balance Madrid. He's such a lucky charm Zidane will soon want to wear him around his neck. 

But none of Madrid's players came close to the level of Modric. In the first half in particular, when the visitors looked the more likely with their slick counter-attacks, the Croatian was everything: defensive shield, ball winner, distributor and architect. 

Modric has been pulling this trick for some time now, but Saturday saw the appreciation for him go to another level again. You could have put him in a phone box with a lion and he would have calmly picked out the number for the fastest delivery service in town. 

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Modric's performance, though, was whom he did it without. There was no Toni Kroos at the Camp Nou on Saturday, and Casemiro didn't appear until late on. Modric, then, didn't have his usual protector or his right-hand man, but it didn't matter. He found a way anyway, and so did Madrid more generally.

There's something about the way Madrid are doing this, collecting points and wins regardless of how and regardless of circumstances. In addition to Kroos and Casemiro, there was no Gareth Bale in the starting XI, no Alvaro Morata to turn to from the bench and only a doppelganger of Benzema on hand—in looks only.  

If you had been told two months ago that Madrid would go to the Camp Nou with a watered-down front three and a second-string midfield, you would have envisaged them tumbling like a post-Brexit pound. But no. 

Madrid emerged unscathed from another major test, and that's two down now. After a gentle start, trips to the Calderon and Catalonia in consecutive away matches had represented a significant juncture in Madrid's season. No two fixtures on the calendar are more difficult, but after going through them, their lead is bigger than when it started. 

A six-point advantage isn't insurmountable, but the gap is a vast one in context. As Luis Enrique mentioned, Madrid are a leader "who don't slip up," or who at least aren't right now. They've gone to the Calderon and won. They've gone to Anoeta and won. They've gone to Camp Nou and drawn. 

"One point feels like a win," Marcelo said, per the club's official website. Modric said the same, adding: "If we play as a team, giving everything out on the pitch, we're very difficult to beat."

He's right, and Barcelona discovered so. The Catalans should've won the battle, but they didn't; now Madrid can win the war. With a line that didn't feel restricted to this game, with perhaps an image of Ramos burned into his head, Luis Enrique said: "We had it in our hands."

Others know what that feels like. Who else but him?