Do Barça and Real Ever Play Anyone Else Anymore?

How classical can El Clásico be when it gets expanded to four times a year?

And exported in two of them?

They're clearly dosh magnets, but dudes!

How much is too much?

Maybe everyone's right.

Sooner or later, the biggest of the big brands are gonna finally push for a European Super League so hard, they'll get it. If so, they'll culminate a movement that began in 1998 and put paid to football as we know it.

They'll find a way to bribe UEFA -- another grand tradition of the sport -- and squads like these Iberian Godzillas can pair up to their hearts' content.

Until then, they'll just have to settle for overblown exhibition games and the Spanish Super Cup.

That tourney final’s first leg was dominated by Real Madrid, and Barcelona could do very little about it.

Barça has had better weeks in its history. First, Neymar goes all français, and now they get their patooties handed to them in a 1-3 first-leg drubbing.

At that point, what else could go wrong?

The scoreless first half flattered the Blaugrana to deceive, but after intermission, run of play caught up with them.

Los Blancos got their party started thanks to their very good friend Gerard Piqué:

Tweet about that, dude.

Lionel Messi stepped up to take a penalty  Luis Suárez had won in the 77th minute and converted it to keep the deception of parity alive:

Always a controversy when Suárez wins a penalty.

A familiar name in El Clásico matches -- Cristiano Ronaldo -- came off the bench and scored and absolute stunner to lead Real:

 

Odds are he's your future Ballon d'Or winner. Again.

But if UEFA had a verson of FIFA's Fair Play award, the Portuguese international has a 'ways to go.

Dude didn't exactly handle a questionable call very well.

Now he'll have five games to think about it.

How much was Real dominating this match?

Being one man down -- and a key man, at that -- made zero difference. In the 80th minute, Marco Asensio took the revenge for Ronaldo’s dismissal:

 

No team better than Real Madrid when they're in transition.

Now we'll see if they can hold serve in this season's El Clásico v5.0