El Clásico live blog: Scores and highlights from Barcelona vs. Real Madrid

Wow, catch your breath after that. One of the greatest editions of El Clásico of all time, and Lionel Messi is the hero. He scored the opener to get Barcelona back in the game, then found the winner with literally the last kick of the ball. Thanks to that result, Barca is back in the La Liga title race — they’re ahead of Real Madrid on head-to-head, but Los Merengues still have a game in hand. It looks like the title race will go down to the final day.

You can check out a match report of Real Madrid vs. Barcelona right here.

90’ — GOAL! Real Madrid 2-3 Barcelona. AMAZING! Lionel Messi scores a winner in stoppage time! Instead of wasting time, Madrid commits too many men forward for the winner and gets carved up. The Blaugrana go end-to-end in 10 seconds, Sergi Roberto cuts it back, and Messi scores with the last kick of the ball.

86’ — GOAL! Real Madrid 2-2 Barcelona. Substitute James Rodriguez equalizes for Los Merengues with only 10 men! Marcelo, who’s been the best player on the pitch for either team, provides the assist. Despite Madrid playing with 10 men and only one defender, they’ve overpowered Barca. Incredible.

82’ — Real Madrid doesn’t have a defender on the bench to replace Ramos, and since they’re trailing, they’re not even going to put in a makeshift one. Nacho — Madrid’s 4th choice center back — is going at it alone. That means their midfield is stretched badly and having to do things like hack down Messi early, which Kovacić just got a yellow card for.

80’ — Tough to see Madrid getting back in this game, but Navas is giving them a chance. He makes another great stop on Piqué.

78’ — RED CARD! Real Madrid captain Sergio Ramos is shown a straight red, and it’s an easy call. Launched himself into Lionel Messi, high and late, with two feet and got nowhere near the ball.

75’ — Once again, Ronaldo shoots and ter Stegen saves. Had to check to make sure it wasn’t a replay.

73’ — GOAL! Real Madrid 1-2 Barcelona. What a hit by Ivan Rakitić! From 25 yards, the Croatian midfielder curls a shot around the hand of Keylor Navas. The Madrid goalkeeper never had a chance. And if Barca can hold on, they’ll be back in the La Liga title race.

72’ — Yet another ter Stegen save, this time from Asensio. If the score holds, MATS is the clear man of the match.

70’ — Substitution for Real Madrid. Casemiro is off, Mateo Kovacić is on. Casemiro picked up a yellow in the first half and the referee was very kind to not send him off on a couple of occasions. Barca has opted to add some numbers to midfield and push Messi up the pitch, bringing on Andre Gomes for Alcácer.

68’ — Incredible from Navas! Iniesta finds Suárez with a sensational through ball and it looks like he has an easy goal, but Navas quickly gets across his goal and comes up with a fantastic stop.

67’ — Big miss by Ronaldo, though it wasn’t exactly his fault. Benzema plays Asensio through, but he’s not on the same page with his superstar. CR7 moves a hair early, Asensio plays the ball a hair late, Ronaldo reaches back and can’t make good contact.

65’ — It feels like either team could score at any time. The ball isn’t spending a ton of time in the midfield, both teams are attacking vertically and aggressively.

59’ — Another excellent save by Navas! Piqué wins a header off a corner and directs it towards the top corner, but Madrid’s goalkeeper reacts as quickly as a human being reasonably could.

56’ — Signs of live from Barcelona. Rakitić to Alcácer, but Keylor Navas makes a very nice save. To be honest, Alcácer should have been able to place it somewhere that Navas couldn’t get it, Rakitić’s pass had completely beaten the defense.

53’ — Ter Stegen again! Marcelo to Benzema, but the Barca keeper comes up with a kick save. The Barca defense is virtually absent today.

52’ — Fun fact here: Casemiro is the 100th Madrid player to score in El Clásico.

48’ — Ter Stegen makes another excellent save. This time, it’s off a 20-yard drive from Toni Kroos, set up brilliantly by Marcelo. Barcelona’s asking a lot of their goalkeeper today.

47’ — Marco Asensio looks ready to make an impact. He makes an excellent runs forward, lays off to Carvajal, and Piqué just barely puts it out for a corner to prevent the goal-scoring chance. Nothing comes of the corner, but it’s a good sign for Los Merengues.

46’ — We’re back for the second half. No changes for either team at halftime.

3:45 p.m. — The halftime stats show how each team has executed their style. Barca has 60 percent possession and 93 more completed passes than Madrid, but Los Merengues have had better chances to score. Even though they haven’t been around Barcelona’s box that often, they’ve been dangerous when they got there, putting six shots on target to Barcelona’s one.

HALFTIME — Real Madrid 1-1 Barcelona.

That was everything we ask for from El Clásico and more. Extremely fast paced, spectacular last-ditch defending and a goal for each team. One of the best halves of soccer we’ve watched anywhere in the world this season.

44’ — This is a big moment for Asensio. He’s shown flashes of brilliance this season, but he hasn’t been asked to put together a big end-to-end performance in a game like this before. He’s one of the world’s most promising young players and in line for more playing time next season, but he’s being asked to grow up early.

39’ — Bad news for Madrid. Bale, who had a calf problem coming into this game, goes down clutching that calf. He’ll be subbed off, and interestingly, for Marco Asensio. That suggests Zidane values a goal more than defense and possession; some fans might have expected Isco.

36’ — Big save by ter Stegen. Modrić takes a rip from 20 yards and the German keeper makes an incredible diving stop.

33’ — GOAL! Real Madrid 1-1 Barcelona. What a response from Lionel Messi and the Blaugrana! He picks up a pass on the edge of the box, slaloms through four white shirts and places the ball into the back of the net from 12 yards. Spectacular.

28’ — GOAL! Real Madrid 1-0 Barcelona. Casemiro scores it! After a corner, Marcelo sends a second ball in, which Sergio Ramos gets on the end of. He hits the post, but Casemiro is in position to tap in the rebound.

Terrible defense by Barcelona, both Ramos and Casemiro were completely unmarked.

26’ — More of the same: Barca possession, Madrid counters, ter Stegen in control in the Blaugrana net.

Here’s a look at Marcelo’s forearm to Messi’s mouth. It looks completely accidental, the referee was probably correct not to book the Brazilian.

21’ — Uh oh, Lionel Messi has a bloody mouth. He takes an accidental forearm from Marcelo and he doesn’t look great.

Barca’s players aren’t too angry, they seem to realize Marcelo didn’t mean it.

20’ — Marc-André ter Stegen is tested again, he makes another good save on Ronaldo.

18’ — This has settled into a match where Barcelona controls possession and Madrid counters quickly. Karim Benzema just had a shot saved off a fantastic through ball by Luka Modrić.

12’ — Bad news for Madrid, Casemiro is already on a yellow. He got beat badly by Messi, then hacked him down.

11’ — Barcelona has settled down, started putting together some passing moves, and Luis Suárez has their first half-chance. He misses a foot wide from 25 yards.

6’ — All Madrid early. They’re breaking fast quickly with some brilliant long balls. Ronaldo has the first shot of the game saved.

And an interesting wrinkle here — Zinedine Zidane has swapped his forwards. Ronaldo is on the right and Gareth Bale is on the left.

2’ — Big penalty shout! A spectacular diagonal by Sergio Ramos finds Dani Carvajal, who squares for Cristiano Ronaldo. Samuel Umtiti makes an aggressive challenge, but the referee thinks he got more of the ball than the man. And the referee is probably right.

1’ — Kickoff! If there’s a player to keep an eye on to see how the match is going for these teams, it’s Real Madrid’s defensive midfielder, No. 14 Casemiro. He’s been Madrid’s best player at times this season, and he’s had some poor games too. He’ll be tasked with making sure Lionel Messi and Andrés Iniesta can’t get into dangerous areas to create scoring chances.

2:44 p.m. ET — The Madridistas’ tifo says “The world is Real” and depicts their 32 La Liga titles won. If they win this game, they’ll be all but assured of 33.

On Sunday, Barcelona and Real Madrid contest the biggest game of their season so far. And for the Blaugrana, they might need to win the second La Liga edition of El Clásico in order to save their season.

Madrid got a draw at Camp Nou in the first matchup between these two teams, giving them a leg-up in the race for the La Liga title. Los Merengues have a three-point lead on Barca, and they’ll keep the head-to-head tiebreaker over their rivals with a scoreless draw or a victory.

Midweek, Madrid won in Champions League to advance to the semifinal, while Barca was knocked out. That means La Liga is everything to Barcelona now, so this game might mean even more to them than it does to Los Merengues.

This is a live blog, so this post will update constantly as the game is going on. If you refresh, you can see the latest updates above.

Real Madrid lineup (4-3-3): Keylor Navas; Marcelo, Sergio Ramos, Nacho, Dani Carvajal, Casemiro, Luka Modrić, Toni Kroos, Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, Gareth Bale

Barcelona lineup (4-3-3): Marc-André ter Stegen; Jordi Alba, Samuel Umtiti, Gerard Piqué, Sergi Roberto, Sergio Busquets, Ivan Rakitić, Andrés Iniesta, Paco Alcácer, Luis Suárez, Lionel Messi

Date/time: Sunday, 2:45 p.m. ET

Venue: Estadio Santiago Bernabeu, Madrid, Spain

TV: beIN Sports (U.S. and Canada — English), beIN Sports en Español (U.S. and Canada — Spanish), Sky Sports 1 (U.K.), Movistar (Spain).

Online: beIN Sports Connect (U.S. and Canada), Fubo, Sling, go90 (U.S.), Sky Go (U.K.)

Make friends: Hit up Real Madrid community Managing Madrid and Barcelona community Barca Blaugranes.

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