Luis Suárez hits hat-trick as Barcelona demolish insipid Real Madrid

Real Madrid have now won just once in six games – and if this is to be the end for Julen Lopetegui, it was a painful one, leaving his team in ninth place, seven points behind Barcelona. Nor was it just the scoreline; it was the sensations too. In the first 45 minutes here, Madrid simply didn’t exist – they were, put bluntly, awful. Simply not there. And while they did react in the second half, while they made a game of this, while they rebelled, it was insufficient. Lionel Messi was not there, but Suárez was. He had feared that the chance had gone, and them took charge of ensuring it hadn’t, adding two more goals to go with his first-half penalty – both of them superb.

Suárez had departed head in his hands, muttering to himself at half-time. Looking up at the scoreboard, that might have appeared odd, but the reaction was no more than a reflection of a reality that had been played out here and around the ground 95,000 culés felt the same. Barcelona were leading 2-0 yet Suárez knew, as they all did, that it should have been more. And not just because of what had unfolded barely seconds before.

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from Football | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/oct/28/barcelona-real-madrid-la-liga-match-report