Saturday’s pre-season Clasico encounter between Barcelona and Real Madrid has been anything but friendly, with plenty of tough tackles and flashpoints in the opening 45 minutes.
There has been moments of quality, including Oriol Romeu’s effort which crashed off the crossbar and Ousmane Dembele’s opening goal, which came about after a well-worked free-kick routine between Ilkay Gundogan and Pedri.
Alejandro Balde produced another moment of quality towards the end of the first half. He showed excellent determination and strength to stop Rodrygo going through on goal, before weaving between multiple Real Madrid players to drive Barcelona up the park.
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Balde is making his first start of pre-season, as he was a half time substitute during Barcelona’s defeat to Arsenal on Thursday. He has been using the off-season to tend to his ankle injury, suffered at the back end of last campaign, and he certainly looks to have fully recovered, and come back stronger.
