Barcelona can show a glimpse of the future by beating Real Madrid

Barcelona have started the season only slightly better than struggling Real Madrid, but if any one game can ignite their season, it will be this one.

Only Manchester United against Liverpool draws a bigger global audience than El Clasico, but with both sides struggling for form, only on-field issues are important to the two sides at this moment in time.

With Real Madrid winning just once and scoring just twice in their last six matches in all competitions, Barcelona’s slow start to the season has largely gone unnoticed, masked by the furore at the Bernabeu.

Despite the disastrous beginning to the season that Julen Lopetegui’s team have had, Barcelona sit just four points ahead of them in La Liga: Since beating Huesca 8-2, draws with Girona, Athletic Bilbao and Valencia and defeat to Leganes have seen them drop nine points from matches they would have expected to stroll through.

Barcelona have only won once in their last five matches in all competitions and their 4-2 win over Sevilla on Saturday was their first in the league since beating Real Sociedad over a month ago.

That Barcelona versus Real Madrid offers the home team a chance to seize the initiative in the title race and put a seven-point buffer between the two rivals shows that while the Camp Nou club have been below-par, Los Blancos have simply been worse.

But the poor league form of both teams is not the strangest thing about the game on Sunday afternoon.

With Andres Iniesta and Cristiano Ronaldo departed for pastures new, there was always going to be something of a contemporary feel to the match, but with Lionel Messi ruled out for three weeks after getting injured against Sevilla, this really will be a glimpse into the future of Clasicos.

The greatest players show up in the biggest matches, so goes the saying, and there are few greater matches than El Clasico when it comes to soccer, but the three best players in recent seasons — Iniesta, Ronaldo and Messi — will be missing from the occasion for the first time since December 2007.

Messi, of course, is the only one of the trio who remains in Spain, and he will not be around forever. That he must sit this game out means everyone — Real Madrid players and fans aside — will suffer from being denied another chance to marvel at him perform.

For Barcelona, it means they must cope without their talisman, and they have to do it better than Real Madrid seemingly have since the summer when Ronaldo left for Juventus.

In Messi’s absence, the responsibility will fall onto the likes of Philippe Coutinho, Ousmane Dembele and Arthur to give us a sneak preview of how the new Barcelona might materialize when Messi does eventually retire, or have to take a back step.

That is a far from straightforward task, though; to say Messi is underappreciated might be an overstatement, but we are so used to seeing him flit around the pitch at will, regularly doing things that most professional players will never do, that his poetic and unrelenting brilliance can sometimes go unnoticed.

This season, the latest installment in the Argentinean’s superhuman narrative has seen him develop into a new role, dropping deeper to vacate Iniesta’s position at times, adapting autonomously to both the team’s needs and his own.

Without that herculean figure, the onus will be placed on Coutinho to turn provider and take on that creative mantle. Regardless of his enormous price-tag, that is a huge pressure to shoulder.

It is not too much of a stretch to suggest this game will decide the direction that the title race takes. If Barcelona can win it, not only would it hammer another nail in the coffin for Lopetegui — potentially the final one — it would put seven points between the teams. With just over a quarter of the season played, that might be a significant or decisive margin.

We know exactly how both teams will play the game; the only deviation from that will be which team handles the pressure, the scrutiny and the occasion the best.

Will Barcelona be able to adapt in one match to the loss of Messi? Or will Messi’s absence level the playing field?

Neither side has hit the heights they are capable of this season — other than, perhaps, Barca’s fleeting, one-off showing against Spurs at Wembley — but this blockbuster, humdinger of a game would be a decent place to start.

This is more than just winning one of the biggest games in world football for Barcelona: this is about exerting some dominance on the Liga title race. To do so minus Messi would be some statement, and might be telling as to their blueprint long-term.