FC Barcelona vs Real Madrid, 2-2
With international qualifiers right around the corner, I was happy to see that the Argentinians and Spaniards were still showing affection for their Seleccion teammates despite the usual tensions attendant on El Clasico. Otherwise, the first part of the game was frankly terror-inducing, especially given that Tito had opted to replace injured central defenders Carles Puyol and Gerard Pique with... wait for it... left-back Adriano Correia instead of Marc Bartra or our newly purchased supposed CB substitute, Alex Song. Still, even he was more effective in his unaccustomed position than right-back Dani Alves, who luckily was injured early in the game and had to be replaced by the recently promoted and always awesome Martin Montoya. By then, Cristiano Ronaldo had already scored his first, and Karim Benzema had come ludicrously close to scoring another (although fortunately for us, he choked completely in front of goal and sent his shot way wide).
Man of the Match was definitely Lionel Messi, who tracked a cross from Pedro Rodriguez as it pinballed among the RM defense and finally slammed it past Iker Casillas with his left foot. In the second half, our Leo scored again, this time off a free kick into Casillas' top right corner that was truly beautiful to behold. But not to be outdone, Ronaldo scored his second goal five minutes later, and although the Barcelona players had several good chances in the last fifteen minutes, including a hard shot off the crossbar by Montoya and a tragic miss by Pedro, they were held to a draw.
Bottom line: we could have either lost or won by several additional goals, so I've decided that I'm happy with the result. Although where Pepe gets off criticizing our players for diving is beyond me, especially after a particularly brutal game by Xabi Alonso that could have ended in expulsion. And Andres Iniesta really should have been awarded that PK.