Real Madrid let Barcelona win El Clásico by standing around and doing nothing

Barcelona beat Real Madrid 4-0 on Saturday, and that score doesn’t do justice to the absolute non-performance Los Merengues turned in. Their midfield was non-existent, Cristiano Ronaldo looked like he couldn’t be bothered to run and Isco got himself sent off after coming on as a substitute.

Madrid’s ineptitude was best summed up on Barcelona’s second goal of the game.

There are so many things wrong with this goal, which featured the dumbest sequence you’re going to see from a pair of top-level teams all season. Here’s why this goal really shouldn’t have happened -- and why Madrid should have had a chance to score instead -- in five images.

Toni Kroos played this game like he was actively trying to get Rafa Benitez fired. It was a masterpiece in not being bothered to do your job at all.

So, Barca stepped up once Luka Modric started carrying the ball forward, playing an offside trap to restrict his passing options. That’s great, in theory. In practice, they totally screwed it up. This is genuinely awful defending that should lead to Cristiano Ronaldo having a one-on-one with the goalkeeper. But instead ...

DUDE, RUN. COME ON.

But no, he just stands there.

Here’s the moment at which Modric loses the ball. He can be forgiven for not making an early pass, but by this point, he’d had the ball for a while and should have realized no one was making a run. Cutting back, playing the ball out to the left and letting everyone get themselves sorted out was the best option. Instead, he just dwells on the ball, pissed off that there’s no good passing options and lets Luis Suarez win it back.

Real Madrid is not in good defensive position to deal with this, since their right back is still offside, somehow, despite Jordi Alba getting even more out of position and playing the rest of the white shirts onside.

Modric is put in a tough spot here. Does he stick with Suarez, or does he put pressure on Andres Iniesta? He chooses the latter, which puts Raphael Varane in a two-on-one situation and forces him to look in Suarez’s direction. That’s enough to open up a pass to Neymar, who scores.

All of this happened because an entire team of guys who cost eight-figure transfer fees (and two nine-figure transfer fees!) didn’t feel like doing anything at all in the world’s biggest rivalry match. They just stood still, out of position. This entire match was a gift to Barcelona.