It's been a few months, but Jude Bellingham is back. After a delayed start to his season and an international break packed full of questions regarding where – and remarkably, if – he fits into England's World Cup plans, the Real Madrid man has showed in Sunday's Clasico that he remains the man for the biggest of occasions.
Bellingham has had a special relationship with Spain's biggest game ever since arriving at Santiago Bernabeu, and so it proved again on Sunday. Bellingham was everywhere, at the centre of everything Madrid did well as they battered Barcelona, even if the 2-1 scoreline told another story.
For a short time, it seemed that it wouldn't be Madrid's day as they had both a penalty and a Kylian Mbappe wondergoal overturned by VAR inside the opening 10 minutes, but Bellingham had other ideas. He received the ball just inside the Barcelona half, expertly turned away from Pedri and fed Mbappe, who had little to do other than look up, consider the angles, and smash into the bottom corner.
Barca and Fermin Lopez were gifted an equaliser by some sloppy play from Arda Guler, but Los Blancos never let up, and it was Bellingham who scored the second, ghosting into the box and side footing home into an empty net from an Eder Militao knockdown.
Everything after felt quite routine. Barca, without both Raphinha and Robert Lewandowski due to injury, lacked potency as Lamine Yamal failed to back-up his pre-match fighting words with a performance. Mbappe had a controversial penalty saved, though him netting would have given the scoreline a more accurate feeling.
GOAL breaks down the winners & losers from the Bernabeu…
AFPWINNER: Jude Bellingham
There was a sense that Bellingham needed a big performance here, if only to reassert himself. The Englishman had been strangely forgotten in the Madrid consciousness, in part due to the excellent performances of Guler while Bellingham recovered from his summer shoulder surgery.
This, though, was a game that showed the levels between the two. Bellingham was asked to play as a right-sided No.10, though covered pretty much every blade of grass. Going forward, he was dynamic, while off the ball he harassed and harried Pedri, largely marking the Spaniard out of the game. He was good value for his goal, and on another day, might have had one or two more.
This is the Bellingham paradox of sorts. He can produce this kind of performance whenever asked, but hasn't done it enough since his remarkable debut season in Spain. It is easy to forget, though, that he won't turn 23 until June.
And with his England place apparently in doubt, this was the statement showing he needed to remind everyone back home of his ability. Thomas Tuchel better have been watching…
AdvertisementGetty Images SportLOSER: Lamine Yamal
Yamal is human after all. All eyes were on the Barcelona teenager ahead of kick-off in part due to him having claimed on social media that referees favour Madrid – something that didn't go down too well in the Spanish capital. Yamal then doubled down on that sentiment in the hours before the game with an Instagram story that referenced the kind of stick he regularly gets from Madridistas (tensions are no longer stoked in press conferences, it seems).
The issue is, these kinds of sentiments tend to need to be backed up by actual showings of impressive football, and Yamal failed to produce anything like his best. He has been fighting through injuries for a couple months now, and he subsequently looked a step off it in the biggest game of the season to date.
Yamal managed just two shots – neither of which were on target – and was rather limited as a creative force. In fairness, Madrid defended him well, too. Alvaro Carreras was on him from the first minute while and Dean Huijsen offered plenty of help. It is true, too, that Yamal was lacking in quality support without Lewandowski and Raphinha, but these are the kind of games you now expect the youngster to take over.
By the end of it all, he was left arguing with a furious Dani Carvajal, who claimed the teenager 'talks too much'. Maybe he's right. There will be other days for Yamal; this just wasn't a very good one.
AFPWINNER: Xabi Alonso
Madrid have now played two big games this season, winning one and losing the other. In the first, a 5-2 drubbing at the hands of Atletico Madrid, Xabi Alonso didn't really change anything. He went with his version of a 4-4-2, and didn't offer much to confront the entirely predictable, long-ball football that Diego Simeone would play. Real deserved to get hammered.
But here, Alonso adapted. Eduardo Camavinga was a surprising selection but was deployed to shut down Alejandro Balde's surges up the left, while Bellingham was given a little more positional freedom and Mbappe's instructions were clear: run straight forward very fast. The result was a Madrid drubbing in the first half.
And then, in the second, Alonso tightened things up. Realising Barca were tired and lacking in ideas, he instructed his side to bunker in. Los Blancos' shape was excellent, and Barca's only real chance came from a fluffed Jules Kounde run in behind – the kind of effort you'd image Alonso would be fine to surrender.
His credentials as a tactician could never truly be questioned, but this was Alonso's best day yet in the Madrid dugout.
Getty ImagesLOSER: Hansi Flick
As for the other bench… Well, technically, Hansi Flick wasn't there. That was occupied by Marcus Sorg, Barca's assistant manager who stepped in for the German after Flick was sent off against Girona last week.
Flick, could be seen high in the stands, watching from afar, and he must have hated what he saw. Barca were poor at both ends, and outworked in the middle. Their signature high line was repeatedly exploited by Madrid, and even if they did successfully catch Mbappe offside on a couple of situations, it proved to be an act of suicide for the first goal.
At the other end, their attack was non-existent. Ferran Torres is an agreeable back-up striker who can tag in against lesser opposition, but he looked lost here. Fermin, meanwhile, lacked muscle in midfield and conviction in attack despite netting the equaliser.
Flick can, and surely will, point to the injury issues that have plagued Barca as part of a reason for this loss, and there's a point to be made there. But he is also now five points behind his arch rivals in La Liga, meaning their title defence is already at real risk of failing.