Who Said What: The world reacts to Real Madrid's humiliating 4-0 defeat against Barcelona
Not many would have seen it coming, but FC Barcelona secured a more than comfortable victory over Real Madrid with a score-line that would humiliate fans and players for years to come. With goals from Neymar, Suarez (twice!) and Andres Iniesta, the Catalans secured all the three points from the first Clasico of the season.
In-form player Neymar proved his mettle yet again as he grabbed a goal and assisted one for Andres Iniesta in a stellar fashion. Luis Suarez, on the other hand, grabbed 2 goals on the day, Sergi Roberto playing him through for the first one and the returning Leo Messi came off the bench to assist the Uruguayan's second goal.
You can read the match report here.
Here are a few thoughts from players, managers, and pundits all over the world:
Fabio Capello (Former Real Madrid manager) on Sky Italia: "Real Madrid tried to use last year's blueprint against Barca. It didn't work. Could have been worse. And, yes Danilo is not a Real Madrid player."
Real Madrid manager Rafa Benitez:
“Whenever you lose it’s always bad, especially against Barcelona. Now we have to train hard and work hard to improve. I hope the team can recover quickly. When you lose in this way there is a worry as to how the players will react. We’ve paid for our mistakes. At half-time, they were angry and at the end of the game there was little to say.”
“I won’t talk about a lack of desire in my team. In the second half, we’ve started really well we just lacked a reaction. The idea was to use players with experience and personality. We wanted to attack and win back the ball high up the field, but it didn’t come off. We’re all responsible for it not going well, now we look for unity in the group and to try and sort this out in the next game.”
When asked if it was a team picked by club President Florentino Perez, he said, “I try to manage the squad as best as possible. I picked players with the quality to do better than we did. The analysis is subjective. We haven't done so well. Now we need to deal with the next match. There are a lot of matches left. It's not the day for individual analysis. We must reflect and get together as soon as possible to prepare the following matches.”
Marcelo:
“We are here, we face the consequences. First we want to apologize to the fans, we will continue fighting. I don't want a change of coach, we are at the beginning of the project, we have confidence in Benitez. When the team is not doing well the fans have the right to whistle. The team is sad and very emotional after the loss."
Luka Modric: (Quotes via Dermot Corrigan )
"We were not compact as a team, we gave Barcelona space & that was too dangerous. We must be a team. When we are compact and all fight together, we are very, very good. Difficult to know why this happened but it's not the first time. We must be together as a team. We must show character. We cannot drop our hands and drop more points. We must fight and find a way out of this."
Barcelona goalkeeper Claudio Bravo:
"I think we prepared well for the game, we visualized it well, and we ended up playing an incredible game. ”
Sergio Busquets:
"Very happy, no one expected this. This makes you feel stronger. This team continues to make history. I'm doing well, but I hope the best is yet to come. I'm still young, I still can improve things.”
Barcelona player Arda Turan:
Barcelona manager Luis Enrique after the match:
“This victory is glorious, especially in the way that it came about. We were the better side and the triumph is down to us. There is a long way to go, but it is always important to win here. It has been an all-round performance. It will go down in history as a memorable game for Barca.”
"Ovation Iniesta? He's world heritage. I understand why Madrid fans applauded him. Did Madrid give up quickly? They didn't, but we were better, we created chances and we took them. You can win at the Bernabeu, but the best thing is the way we did it.”
Gerard Pique:
"Great @Munirhaddadi! But next time you leave that ball for me, ok? We continue to make history!" referring to an open missed chance by Munir for the fifth goal.
Andres Iniesta:
"I said at the press conference that we just had to be ourselves, and I think that's what we did. This feels great. I honestly think we played a complete game.”