Barça this Sunday crushed Real Madrid 5-1 in Camp Nou, playing in concert in sublime moments and destroying one of the shortest-lived coaches in the history of the white club. Julen Lopetegui, a competent manager, jinxed from the very moment he left the Spanish national team just days before this summer's football World Cup, will be paid off this Monday by Florentino Pérez and will again fulfil the tradition which says that, in the world of football, there's nothing worse than having millions in the offices and not on the pitch.
Barça without Messi (who's injured) is far superior to Madrid without Cristiano. In the same way that Barça with Messi was too. The Madrid which passed through Camp Nou is a mediocre team, in keeping with the place it holds in the league table. They say that Lopetegui's substitute will be Antonio Conte, a former Juventus and Chelsea coach and from the school of making headlines from the bench with a strong character. Very far from managers who worked well at the white club, like Zinedine Zidane, with whom it's won the last three Champions Leagues.
The competition has just started and obviously nothing is decided yet. But Barça have got themselves an important advantage over their historic rival. It will be a good week to head to Madrid, which tends to taken humiliation by the Catalans on the pitch very badly. Another detail: this century, when there's been a Socialist prime minister in Madrid, the statistics say that Madrid doesn't win the Champions League (Barça can), and also that it wins fewer Leagues (two against four for Barça).
A week, also, in which the most anticipated news story for Catalonia will come, most likely, from Madrid, with the filings from the public prosecution service and the state's legal service in the trial of last year's referendum which will be released, it seems, on Friday 2nd November, All Souls' Day. The farce of the political prisoners' trial will have indictments calling for many years in prison, without the European dressing down of judge Llarena having had any effect. The Spain which is walking deafly but steadily towards its defeat will have taken another step.