El Clasico: Why Barcelona are favorites over Real Madrid - ESPN

Let's say that, before the season began, I told you that there would be a team in Spain that scores so many goals that they might cause scorekeepers across the country to refuse to work in protest of their unfairly demanding working conditions. This team would produce the leading goal scorer in Europe. They would score 33 goals through 10 matches. Come late October, they'd have eight more goals than any other team across the continent.

You would've digested this information, nodded your head, and said, "Of course. Real Madrid did the LaLiga-Champions League double last year -- and then they signed the best attacker in the world! They already had the Ballon d'Or favorite, Vinícius Júnior, and now they have Kylian Mbappé! Everyone else is doomed."

You, of course, would have been wrong.

Through 10 games, it's Barcelona's attack, not Real Madrid's, that is reaching these rarely seen heights in Spain. Madrid remain undefeated and only three points back of their eternal rivals in the table, but it's been a grind. Barcelona have won five league matches by at least three goals -- Madrid have scored three goals in a LaLiga game only twice so far this season. There's one team in Spain that looks like an all-time-great attacking side -- and it's not the one with Vinícius, Mbappé and Jude Bellingham.

While there's still plenty of season to go and Madrid do still remain the betting favorites to retain the LaLiga crown, there's no question as to which has been the better team through the first 10 games of the season. Barcelona are firing on all cylinders while Real Madrid haven't quite clicked into gear.

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So, how did Barcelona surpass Madrid? Ahead of Saturday's El Clasico, live on ESPN+, let us look at the reasons, arranged in ascending order of importance.

Barcelona's shots are going in

Last season, Barcelona scored 79 goals from 78.47 expected goals, or xG, an advanced stat that measures chance creation:

That might seem "normal" since the numbers are almost perfectly aligned, but the best teams in the world almost always exceed their underlying numbers on the attacking end because they're generating a ton of chances for the best attackers in the world. Most managers end up leaving a club after an unsustainably poor season that likely would've bounced back a little bit on its own, and the story was no different for Xavi Hernandez at Barcelona last season.

The story is very different, however, for Hansi Flick, who took the helm of Barcelona this season. Through 10 matches, his team has scored 33 goals from 26.4 xG:

If Barcelona were finishing at the same rate as last season, they'd currently have a plus-16 goal difference. It would still be the best in the league, but only slightly ahead of Real Madrid's mark of plus-14 or even Atletico Madrid's current level of plus-10. Instead, Barcelona are all the way up at plus-23.

Flick is a big upgrade on Xavi

It's unsurprising, but still worth pointing out: The guy who won the Champions League is a better coach than the one whose previous managerial experience topped out at Al Sadd in the Qatar Stars League. There's no reason to think Xavi was a bad coach by any means, but like most coaches, he was just a coach -- he had his own ideas but was unable to really do anything over the long run that might help his players exceed their collective talent level.

Now, Flick is certainly divisive. His tenure with Germany -- and even at the end of his Bayern stint -- led some to questions whether he was in over his head. His teams never failed to pile up an absurd number of chances against their opposition, but their aggression sometimes led to embarrassing goals conceded. Germany's loss to Japan -- and subsequent elimination from the 2022 World Cup before the knockout round -- served as undeniable proof of his shortcomings as a coach.

Except, Germany generated 10.1 expected goals and conceded 3.4 in the group stages of the 2022 World Cup. The problem was they were only able to turn that dominance into six goals for and five against. The biggest reason Flick flamed out with Germany is that finishing fluctuates massively over a three-match sample.

This isn't to say that he's a perfect coach, but the story in basically every professional sport is that most coaches aren't aggressive enough. They're often more scared of losing than they are devoted to winning. Flick is one of the few coaches where you know that's not true: He wants to blow the opposition off the field. His teams will press like mad, take a million shots, and live with the fact that they're probably going to give up a couple of high-quality chances on the other end. That approach is going to make most teams better. Sure enough, Barcelona are pressing more aggressively this season, controlling more territory, taking more shots, and conceding fewer attempts.

Here's how all of LaLiga looks when stacked up by passes allowed per defensive action (PPDA, a proxy for pressing aggression) and field tilt (or the team's share of final-third possession):

The normal downside to this approach: You concede high-quality chances, and Flick's Barca haven't avoided that this year. Only two teams in LaLiga are giving up better chances to their opponents than Barca, who are conceding shots with an average xG value of 0.12. However, that's somewhat negated by how few shots they concede: 8.5 per game, joint-fewest in LaLiga.

Added together, they've conceded the sixth-fewest xG of any team in the league:

Now, "sixth-best defense" for a team with Barcelona's resources might not sound special. But take a look at how they stack up with everyone else by expected-goal differential:

In a dynamic game like soccer, tactics are all about trade-offs. Dialing up one aspect of your play can make you better, make you worse, or make you look different without actually changing how many points you win. Through 10 matches, a little less defensive solidity has been absolutely worth it for Flick.

Barcelona's best players are available, and the kids are all a year older

Another feather in Flick's cap is that almost all of Barcelona's personnel changes have been internal. Their only big signing over the summer was Dani Olmo from RB Leipzig, and he has played only 21% of the league minutes thus far.

At the same time, we can't really credit Flick for his players being way healthier than they were last season.

Raphinha struggled with injuries throughout the 2023-24 campaign. He played only 40.1% of the minutes, and he's all the way up at 90.1% so far this season. Pedri, too, has played 74.4% of the minutes, after only featuring 43.3% of the time the season before. Same goes for left back Alejandro Balde: 40.3%, up to 70.8%.

While Balde and Pedri's lack of minutes were mostly injury-related, Flick has also been able to rely on a number of young players who are a year older and more capable of handling a higher minutes load. At 17, Lamine Yamal is playing 88.6% of the minutes after featuring in about two-thirds of game time last season. Also 17, Pau Cubarsí has gone from bright spot in a dour season (45.7%) to stalwart in the center of the backline (83.9%). And 20-year-old midfielder Marc Casadó, who had played only 15 professional minutes prior to this season, has featured in 62.4% of the minutes in 2024-25.

On top of that, Barcelona have done all of this with barely any minutes from past midfield stalwarts Gavi or Frenkie de Jong. They've combined for 18 minutes so far. Combine that with a theoretical increase in minutes for the oft-injured Olmo, and there's reason to believe this team could get even better.

Real Madrid's team just doesn't work ... yet

As already mentioned, Madrid are only three points behind Barcelona. They're undefeated -- seven wins and three draws -- and on pace for a fantastic full-season haul of 91 points. Plus, even the underlying numbers look pretty good. Their expected-goal differentials over the past two seasons:

• Last year: plus-0.89 per game • This year: plus-0.89 per game

While you'd theoretically still want to improve after signing Kylian Mbappé, can things really be all that bad if this team is as good as it was last season, when they, you know, won the league and the Champions League? No, but the problem is that they're really not as good.

Madrid have already won five penalties this season -- or just as many as they won across 38 games last year. Strip out penalties, and here's how the same numbers look:

• Last year: plus-0.81 • This year: plus-0.50

When Madrid signed Mbappe back in June, it seemed that any decline would likely come from a defense that now had to carry three attackers -- Mbappé, Vini Jr., and Rodrygo -- plus a midfielder, Bellingham, who don't really do all that much defending. Instead, the defensive outputs have barely budged. They're allowing a quite similar number of shots, expected goals and actual goals through 10 matches.

Instead, it's the attack that's struggling. Madrid are generating 1.4 non-penalty xG per game, compared to 1.7 last season. They have a tiny bit more final-third possession and are attempting an extra half-shot per game, but the quality of the attempts has declined. Despite employing Mbappé, perhaps the best off-ball runner in the sport, their number of through balls attempted per game has been cut in half: down from 2.4 to 1.2.

Their three attackers are all on pace for career-worst seasons, too. Mbappé's averaging 0.62 expected goals+assists per 90 minutes, while Vinicius is down at 0.55, and Rodrygo's sitting at 0.24. Bellingham, too, hasn't been able to get himself going -- he's down at 0.23 xG+xA after posting a career-best of 0.62 last season.

The problem, it seems, is that there's no passing out there. All of these players are creative in the sense that they can create chances for teammates, but they all do it by getting into good positions off the ball or by dribbling and then playing a simple pass to a better-positioned teammate. Without the retired Toni Kroos, there's really no one out there to play the kind of pass that these players love to run on to. If they signed Trent Alexander-Arnold, that problem would be solved -- but he's at least under contract at Liverpool until the end of this season.

There has to be some kind of solution out there -- these players are too good for this team not to be better at scoring goals. My guess is that they'll need to become a little more comfortable without the ball, coaxing the opposition out of their own half and then trying to break quickly into space. That's easier said than done in the league against inferior opposition, but it shouldn't be a problem in Europe. And it also shouldn't be a problem on Saturday in El Clasico.

Barcelona have the best front three in the world

The biggest reason Barca are cruising is that their front three is better than Real Madrid's -- and everyone else's, too. While Madrid have collected three wildly talented but similar players, Barca's three attackers complement each other perfectly.

Robert Lewandowski scored 75 goals in his nearly two Bundesliga seasons under Flick at Bayern. He was the perfect striker for this kind of high-octane approach. He lives on the back shoulder of the back line and just makes run after run after run into the most dangerous areas of the field.

Turns out, even at 35, he might still be the perfect striker for this approach. He's averaging 1.2 xG+xA per 90 minutes -- nearly double Mbappé's rate and more than he put up in either of those seasons with Flick at Bayern. On counterattacks, he's always in the center of the box, ready to finish off a run from one of his wingers. In more settled possession, Barca, at times, look like a basketball team. Midfielders and defenders cycle the ball around, while Lewandowski darts around, trying to find space for a ball into his feet or behind the backline.

Yamal, meanwhile, is already one of the five or 10 best players in the world. It's ridiculous to say it -- he's 17 years old! But I've seen enough. He's like Bukayo Saka, just bigger, stronger, and more dangerous around the goal. He's leading all of Europe in progressive passes received and passes completed into the penalty area. He's a terror when he's cutting in from the right -- he's a magician at finding the perfect horizontal pass to a late-running midfielder. And he just draws so much attention when he has the ball at his feet.

Yamal is taking 3.5 shots per 90 minutes and creating 2.4 chances -- these are superstar volumes, and they're backed up by superstar quality (0.82 xG+xA per 90). If he can stay healthy -- fingers crossed, with Barcelona's history of grinding down their young stars -- then I'd put the most likely outcome for his career as "one of the greatest players of the 21st century." He's just that good, and he won't be hitting his prime for another seven years. It's laughable.

And with all the attention paid to Yamal, Raphinha has been lights-out on the other side. In fact, he might be playing better than either of the other two. He's leading the team with 1.24 xG+xA per 90 minutes and is the ideal secondary winger. In fact, he's third among all players in Europe in total xG and first in xA.

Sometimes it's a chain of intricate play: Yamal wriggles through a crowd of defenders on the right, the ball gets shifted to Raphinha in space on the left, he makes a clever pass or dribble, and then Lewandowski slips off the defender's back shoulder for a through ball or to create space for someone else to run into.

Other times, like on the final goal against Villarreal, the ball goes out to Yamal, everyone shifts their attention his way, and Raphinha just sprints into the space on his side of the field:

We'll see if it continues, but right now, it all just works so well. Lewandowski doesn't need the ball, so he can just stretch and stress the defense with his running. Yamal is so good with the ball that you can play it to him, over and over and over again. And Raphinha is equally adept with the ball at his feet or running into space. He's such a savvy creator and capable goal scorer that he's able to take advantage of the defense constantly shifting away from his side of the field.

It feels so weird to say this. But after years of Real Madrid looking like the model for big-money team-building and Barcelona modeling exactly what you shouldn't do, the reason Barcelona is ahead of Real Madrid right now is that only one of them has found a way to build a team that makes sense.