Barcelona 3-2 Real Madrid: Blaugrana impose themselves
It was a box-to-box encounter which thrilled fans at a sold-out Hard Rock Stadium
Neymar played nearly 75 minutes but this time he did not score
Barcelona saw off Real Madrid in a thrilling clash in Miami at the Hard Rock Stadium, which, for around an hour, didn't let up. It seemed like the players had forgotten this was only a friendly.
RMA
2 ________________ 3
FCB
LINE UP
Real Madrid
Keylor Navas; Carvajal, (Achraf, 74'), Marcelo (Theo, 74'), Varane (Vallejo, 45'), Sergio Ramos (Nacho, 45'), Casemiro (Llorente, 74'), Luka Modric (Isco, 45'), Kovacic (Ceballos, 74'), Benzema (Óscar, 74'), Bale (Mayoral 74'), Asensio (Lucas Vázquez, 45')
FC Barcelona
Jasper Cillessen; Aleix Vidal (Semedo, 63'), Jordi Alba (Digne, 73'), Gerard Piqué (Mascherano, 73'), Umtiti (Vermaelen, 63'), Sergio Busquets (Samper, 73'), Rakitic (Aleñá, 73'), Iniesta (Sergi Roberto, 45'), Luis Suárez (Alcácer, 63'), Messi (Denis Suárez, 63') y Neymar (Arda 73')
Goles
0-1 M.3 Messi. 0-2 M.7 Rakitic. 1-2 M.14 Kovacic. 2-2 M.36 Asensio. 2-3 M.50 Piqué
Árbitro
Jair Marrufo (Estados Unidos). Amonestó a Varane, Carvajal, Suárez y Samper.
Campo
Hard Rock Stadium (Miami). 66014 espectadores
All the talk going into the game surrounded Neymar but he was out of the action when Lionel Messi opened the scoring, played in by Sergio Busquets he fooled Luka Modric and fired past Keylor Navas with the aid of a deflection. That was after three minutes. Three more and Barcelona's second was brewing, netted in the seventh by Ivan Rakitic, who drilled home Neymar's low cross.
Madrid were shaken but struck back when Mateo Kovacic scored against the run of play, before Marco Asensio's lightning break ended in him finding the net to level the score at 2-2 after 36.
Pique flicked home to send Barcelona ahead five minutes after the half-time interval (which lasted nearly half an hour, due to various shows put for the 66,000 odd inside the stadium), and the game eventually petered out because of rafts of substitutions.
However for a long while it was a thriller and the likelihood is now that the wait for another Clasico friendly - the previous one was in 1991 - will not be anywhere near as long.
