In January, Carlos Vela will leave Real Sociedad for Los Angeles FC to prepare for the upcoming MLS season. Vela, who has been at Real Sociedad since 2011, made his final appearance for the Spanish club Wednesday.
In the 90th minute, Vela capped off an excellent career with one last goal. Did he kiss the badge? Of course he kissed the badge.
With little room for dissention, El Clasico is the richest annual clash between two teams in the sports world — more than the Super Bowl, more than the World Series and even more than the Champions League final. Real Madrid and Barcelona are the two most valuable clubs in the world and their rivalry is likewise one of the grandest events on the calendar.
But how do the two clubs compare in value once they take the pitch? We took a look at the values of each team’s starting XI.
Everyone who's anyone wants to know how Messi and Ronaldo stack up against each other in El Clasico, but don't worry, we've got you covered.
Goals: Lionel Messi has scored 24 goals in El Clasico. Cristiano Ronaldo has scored 17 goals in El Clasico.
Assists: Lionel Messi has assisted 13 goals in El Clasico. Cristiano Ronaldo has assisted one goal in El Clasico.
El Clasico is the biggest rivalry in sports, featuring the biggest stars in the biggest venues with some of the biggest prizes in soccer generally on the line. So who are the El Clasico highest scorers, the players who shine when the lights are brightest and the pressure is on?
Lionel Messi — Barcelona (24)
The first Real Madrid vs. Barcelona match of the 2017-18 season is Saturday at the Bernabeu. While this fixture has been dominated by the Messi vs. Ronaldo debate for the last decade, there’s another matchup that pops into people’s minds: El Clasico vs Super Bowl. Which has higher TV ratings?
Real Madrid welcomes Barcelona to the Santiago Bernabeu on Saturday, December 23, for the 175th league edition of El Clasico. The stakes couldn’t be higher with Real desperate to make up ground in La Liga, while a victory for Barcelona at the home of its greatest rival would effectively doom Zinedine Zidane’s men in their quest to defend the title.
If there’s one goal to summarize Barcelona’s 2017-18 La Liga season thus far, it’s this one from the club’s 4-0 defeat of Deportivo on Sunday — it even starts with a poor touch from Luis Suarez, something the Uruguayan has been uncharacteristically guilty of on a number of occasions this season.
However, that touch is followed by a sensational 14-pass move from Barca and finished by Suarez, giving him six goals in his last five league games, so the striker is really beyond criticism right now.
It’s not football’s best kept secret, but Atletico Madrid manager Diego Simeone has confirmed that much like Radamel Falcao and Diego Costa before him, 26-year-old center forward Antoine Griezmann will be allowed to leave the club for “a once in a lifetime chance to play for a certain team.”
For 50 glorious minutes, Ali Khaseif was a magnificent wall, stopping anything and everything thrown his way. The world’s greatest goal scorer on the world’s most expensive team had shot after shot parried away. Then, the goalie got hurt, had to come off and Real Madrid immediately took advantage on the way to a 2-1 win over Al Jazira in the Club World Cup on Wednesday.
A meeting between third and fifth in La Liga turned into a rout inside the first half with Real Madrid racing to a 5-0 lead on Sevilla inside the match’s opening 42 minutes. Nacho got the first, Cristiano Ronaldo added a brace on the day his fifth Ballon d’Or trophy was presented to the Bernabeu crowd, Toni Kroos struck the fourth and 19-year-old Achraf Hakimi scored his first La Liga goal for the club.