On Monday night, European football fans witnessed another El Clasico. Real Madrid faced FC Barcelona in the final of the Spanish Super Cup. The mega match was held at the Al-Awwal Stadium. Madrid cruised past archrivals Barcelona in the Spanish Supercopa final, defeating Xavi’s team 4-1, with Vinicius Junior scoring a brilliant first-half hat-trick against a helpless Catalan defence. This was one of the fastest in the history of this rivalry.

The winger scored twice in the first 10 minutes, putting Carlo Ancelotti’s team in command in Saudi Arabia. Robert Lewandowski equalised for Barcelona with a stunning volley, but Vinicius converted a 39th-minute penalty to restore Los Blancos’ two-goal advantage. Vinícius was overshadowed by Real Madrid’s new star, Jude Bellingham, and is currently struggling with injuries that have kept him out of play for two-and-a-half months. But he came back with a banger against the arch-rivals. 

Bellingham, who has been brilliant in the season so far, won his first trophy in Madrid, and he got the party started early with a sublime ball for Vinicius to chase after destroying a high backline of the Blaugranes and comfortably rounding Inaki Pena to score. This is the first of four trophies that Los Blancos will be targeting for this season and based on this performance they’ll be a threat to all the teams. 

We have not shown the level required for a match like this: Xavi Hernandez

Xavi said after the game, “We have not shown the level required for a match like this. We played our worst game. We weren’t comfortable at any point. Madrid hurt us on the counter. I apologise to the fans because it was hard for us to compete and we showed our worst side.” The former captain needs to re-group his players after the loss. 

“The celebration was for Cris,” Vinicius said. “He’s my idol, and he’s playing here now… I’m very happy with what we did today. Beating Barcelona isn’t easy and winning 4-1 is difficult. It was almost a perfect game.”