Barcelona had the ball. How did Real Madrid win El Clásico?

On paper, Sunday’s Clásico belonged to Barcelona. Hansi Flick’s side attempted 62% of the passes at the Spotify Camp Nou, played 77% of the match’s passes in the final third and took 18 shots to Real Madrid’s 10. They lost 2–1.

The usual line after a match like this is that the better team lost. The event data says something more precise. Barcelona had more of everything except the chances a striker is expected to score, and José Mourinho’s Madrid had twice as many of those.

More shots, fewer clear chances

Barcelona’s control was real. They completed 595 passes to Madrid’s 337, completed 14 passes into the penalty area to Madrid’s three, and had 36 touches in the box to Madrid’s 24. Eleven of their 18 shots came from inside the box.

But a lot of those shots were taken into a crowd. Madrid blocked six of them, a third of the total. Only six of Barcelona’s shots reached Andrii Lunin, and he saved five.

The difference was in the quality of the openings. Opta’s data collectors tag a shot as a big chance when a player would reasonably be expected to score from it: typically a one-on-one with the goalkeeper or a close-range finish with little in the way. It is a human judgement rather than a model, but it is a useful first cut of chance quality.

Barcelona had two big chances all night. Lamine Yamal shot wide from one in the 44th minute, and Lunin saved Gerard Martín’s header from a corner in the 65th. Madrid had four, and Mbappé had three of them. He shot over in the 33rd minute, then scored in the 41st and the 87th. Yan Diomande missed Madrid’s fourth, on the break in first-half stoppage time.

Yamal sums up Barcelona’s evening. He took five shots, one fewer than Raphinha and as many as Arda Güler, and none of them hit the target. Two were blocked. He went past his man four times in ten attempts, but rarely got a clean sight of goal. Anthony Gordon, on the other wing, was the only Barcelona player to test Lunin repeatedly: all three of his shots were on target.

Barcelona’s goal came from a set piece. In the 61st minute Yamal played a short corner, Pedri slid a pass into the box and Raphinha finished with his left foot. It was the only one of their 18 shots that went in.

One goal of each kind

Madrid’s goals came from opposite ends of the tactical range.

The first was patient. In the 40th minute Federico Valverde intercepted a Raphinha pass near his own box, and Madrid kept the ball for 48 seconds. They strung together 19 passes, and every one of their 11 players touched the ball, Lunin included, as they moved it from the right, back through the goalkeeper to the left, and over to the right again. Then Bernardo Silva chipped a long pass out to Marc Cucurella on the left. Cucurella found Diomande near the byline, Diomande’s pass was cut out, and when Barcelona could only scramble the ball a yard or two, Mbappé was there to finish from close range.

The winner took ten seconds. Gabriel Jesus had come on for Raphinha in the 86th minute. About a hundred seconds later he lost the ball just inside Madrid’s half, and Jude Bellingham came away with it. Bellingham found Eduardo Camavinga, himself a substitute in the 80th minute, who moved it wide to Arda Güler on the right. Güler slipped a through ball inside, Camavinga beat his man inside the box and cut it back for Mbappé to score.

Barcelona had the ball for most of the night. Madrid needed it for ten seconds.

Pressure without a breakthrough

The timeline shows how lopsided the second half became. Between Raphinha’s equaliser and Mbappé’s winner, a spell of 26 minutes, Barcelona attempted 66% of the passes and outshot Madrid seven to four. None of the seven shots went in, and only one, Martín’s header, was a big chance.

Then nothing. After the winner, Barcelona had 73% of the passes in the final ten minutes, stoppage time included, and did not take a single shot. Madrid did not take one either. They did not need to.

The match in four spells

Spell	Minutes	Shots	Barcelona share of passes
Kick-off to Mbappé's first	41	7 – 5	58%
Mbappé's first to Raphinha's equaliser	22	4 – 1	65%
Equaliser to Mbappé's winner	26	7 – 4	66%
Winner to full time	10	0 – 0	73%

What it means

This was not a smash-and-grab in the usual sense. Madrid had fewer shots, but they had the better ones, and their two goals came from very different patterns of play. Barcelona had the territory and the volume, and could not turn it into clear chances against a defence that blocked a third of their shots.

There are two caveats. First, this piece leans on Opta’s big-chance tag, which is a judgement made by data collectors, not a probability. It counts clear chances; it does not weigh every shot the way expected goals does. Second, it is one match. Ten shots against 18 is a small sample, and Madrid converting two of their four big chances while Barcelona converted none of their two is the kind of split that can easily go the other way next time.

What to watch next: whether Barcelona’s high share of the ball keeps producing shots from the crowded edge of the box rather than clear chances, and whether Mourinho’s Madrid keep finding ways to score from both long spells of possession and quick breaks.

Method and data

Opta event data for Barcelona v Real Madrid, LaLiga, 25 October 2026, taken from the WhoScored match centre and extracted with the site's WhoScored script. All figures come from the event list, not WhoScored's summary totals, and were computed in code. Big chances are shots Opta tags as big chances. Shots on target are goals and saved shots; blocked shots do not count. Open play means shots Opta does not tag as coming from a corner, free kick, throw-in or other set piece. The penalty area runs from 83 to 100 along the pitch and 21.1 to 78.9 across it, in Opta's 0–100 coordinates. Passes into the box are completed passes that start outside it and end inside it. Final-third passes start in the attacking third. Spells are split at each goal on the expanded match clock, which includes stoppage time; minutes in the text follow the usual convention, so 40:44 is the 41st minute. The goal moves start at the event where Madrid won the ball (Valverde's interception, Bellingham's ball win) and count every Madrid pass up to the goal.