China is maintaining its boycott of La Liga and will continue to not broadcast Spanish football matches in retaliation for Kylian Mbappé's mockery of Mao Zedong. At least for now. The Chinese government received public apologies this Wednesday from Real Madrid, the last of those involved to do so, but has not revoked the order it issued on Monday to suspend the broadcast of La Liga matches, matches related to Mbappé, and commercials starring the footballer. A decision that could lead to losses of up to 400 million for Spanish football.

Painful defeat for Barça against Real Madrid at the Camp Nou (1-2). It is the second consecutive one the blaugrana team has suffered in a few days. Below, some hot takes.

Madrid clipped the wings of Flick's Barça by winning a Clásico that José Mourinho's men took thanks to two goals from Mbappé, the second in the final stages of a frustrating match for Flick's men, who never felt comfortable on the pitch. The players' faces showed anger, aware that the possibility of signing the best start in the entire League was slipping away from them. Mourinho, on the other hand, got his way and leaves reinforced from a stadium where he could have been hurt. But it was not a good game for a too-agitated Barça that was left wanting more in the second half, when at times it seemed they would turn the score around. Quite the opposite. Three minutes from the end, Mbappé left the stadium frozen. And the one who celebrated big was Mourinho.

Barça and Real Madrid will face each other this Sunday night at Camp Nou (21:00, DAZN). Fate has willed that Lamine Yamal's first Clásico at Camp Nou coincides with the return of José Mourinho as the white team's manager to a stadium where he received an unforgettable 5-0 defeat in the culé memory and where he engaged in absolutely lamentable outbursts. The Portuguese coach, who will return to the blaugrana stronghold thirteen years later, will have the last-minute absence of Thibaut Courtois, who is suffering from the flu. The Ukrainian goalkeeper Illia Voloshyn has been called up to the squad in place of the Belgian. Another Ukrainian, Andriy Lunin, will start the match, despite Courtois having tried to be there until the last moment.

History is full of moments in which a detail can change everything. In 2008, José Mourinho came to believe that he would be the new coach of Barça, a club where he had already worked and of which he had great memories at the time. That year, the Portuguese man already saw himself returning to a city of which he only said good things. Furthermore, he did not hide that he loved the club that today, life's ironies, has become his greatest rival. Eighteen years later, Mou returns to Barcelona. He returns to the Camp Nou. The stadium where they have whistled at him and jeered him, where he poked Tito Vilanova in the eye, where he has chased referees and run across the pitch between sprinklers celebrating a great success with Inter. The stadium where he could have been loved if things had gone differently that year in 2008.

José Mourinho appeared in the preview of the classic with a low profile and left those addicted to drama orphaned of the usual controversy. Let them not worry, the Mou who hooks them with his greatest hits of yesterday, today and always will return when he loses. That is to say, this very Sunday if the forecasts that grant Barça the status of favorite are fulfilled.

The great national football classic returns this Sunday to the Spotify Camp Nou with the duel between Barça and Real Madrid. The match will mark the return of José Mourinho to the stadium where many years ago he was part of the blaugrana technical staff and later became a rival with very heated duels when he worked at Chelsea, Inter, or Madrid itself. Marc Cucurella also returns to the Camp Nou, the Catalan player trained at Barça who now plays for the white club.

Due to his age (he will turn 80 in five months), it escapes no one that the very long adventure of Florentino Pérez as president of Real Madrid is closer to the end than to the beginning. However, the powerful Madrid businessman renewed his status as the white leader last June in the first elections the club had held since 2006. He defeated the young Enrique Riquelme at the polls, who garnered 35% of the support despite being quite unknown to the general public, and secured four more years of government that will be stormy if the ball continues not to go in.

Mourinho's hostility towards referees has turned the Santiago Bernabéu into an especially uncomfortable stage for administering justice. Vinícius's expulsion against Villarreal added more fuel to the fire, with a controversy that culminated in the four-match ban imposed by the Competition Committee.

Watching José Mourinho's press conferences is hypnotic. You might think I'm a masochist, but it's a spectacle that draws me in. During the first months of this second stint in Madrid, it seemed like he wasn't the same as before. But in recent days, he has returned. The years go by and he remains in shape. When he raises his voice, his press conferences are both comic and tragic at the same time. Commedia dell'arte Portuguese style.

"The management of Real Madrid conducts an orchestra of gatecrashers and Real Madrid TV is its greatest exponent. Its score is always the same: select the plays that interest them, repeat the grievance, fuel suspicion, and point out enemies. This method recalls propaganda mechanisms exploited by Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany: systematic repetition, construction of an enemy, and subordination of facts to the narrative". This is just a fragment of the extensive tweet made by Javier Tebas, president of the League and vice president of the Spanish Federation (RFEF), to criticize Real Madrid's actions after learning of the four-match suspension imposed on Vinícius.

Real Madrid's Brazilian forward Vinícius Júnior will have to serve a four-match suspension due to his straight red card in the last La Liga matchday against Villarreal. This means he will miss the El Clásico against Barça at the Camp Nou on Sunday, October 25th.

No team wins a title in October, but they can accumulate a capital of excitement among the fans and respect among rivals. We are talking about Barça, which has managed to make fans all over the world wonder what day and at what time it plays, because its matches are a promise of play, goals, and, at times, fantasy.

Real Madrid has become a madhouse, and that is exactly what Mourinho wants. Because he, let us not forget, is the one who poked Tito Vilanova in the eye and it was also he who built an unbreathable, disgustingly toxic climate, which concluded in a schism between the Madridista and Culer players. Mourinho has returned, he has finally taken off the mask of the mature gentleman who combs white hair with a temperate character and is back to being what he has always been: an agitator.

Vinícius Júnior finds it practically impossible to play in the classic on October 25th against Barça. The Brazilian footballer's expulsion in the Real Madrid - Villarreal (1-0) match, after pulling defender Nathan Saliba's hair, will foreseeably lead to a suspension of between two and three games. The action occurred in the 73rd minute, when Vinícius scored a goal that would have meant 2-0. José Mourinho ran to the corner to celebrate it but, meanwhile, the referee was waiting for the VAR's approval. It did not seem that there was any reviewable action but, surprisingly, the referee went to the monitor on the recommendation of Alejandro Muñiz Ruiz. The Galician showed him the images of the violent conduct and the verdict unleashed the storm: goal disallowed and a direct red card.

The Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) will take advantage of the resumption of the League after the international break to correct some of the problems detected during the first seven matchdays of the competition. There are two aspects that are especially concerning: the excessive caution of the VAR and the lack of determination of some referees on the pitch.

There is no contest. This is the feeling with which the 40,533 people present at the Camp Nou went home. Neither the torrential rains, nor the hurricane, nor the absences the team of Pere Romeu had –Laia Aleixandri, Kika Nazareth and Vicky López–, nor the improvement in the Real Madrid squad. Nothing could prevent another rout by the 'blaugranes' against their eternal rival (7-0), the biggest difference in a Barça-Madrid so far.

There are matches that are marked on the calendar in red, and this Sunday's is one of them. The Barça women's team returns to the Camp Nou to host Real Madrid (19:00 hours, DAZN), but is keeping an eye on the sky due to the risk of storms in Catalonia. The match, which was supposed to be played at 17:00 hours, has been postponed for two hours due to the forecast of extreme rain and the risk of flooding. The blue and red club had asked the League for the postponement, which it finally ended up granting. The Catalan entity reminds that one can access the stadium with small, foldable umbrellas, while long and rigid umbrellas are not permitted in accordance with current safety regulations.

Tranquility at Real Madrid after the medical tests that Kylian Mbappé underwent throughout this Saturday at the Valdebebas sports city. The white club has announced that the French forward is suffering from a "hyperextension of the posterior capsule of the left knee," but has not wanted to give a specific recovery timeline. The Madrid entity has limited itself to saying that he is "pending evolution," although various media outlets suggest he would only be out for two weeks.

After being turned down for years and years, Real Madrid managed to complete the signing of Kylian Mbappé in the summer of 2024. The French forward, one of the most prominent goalscorers in football, dreamed of winning the Champions League and landed in a team that a few months earlier had lifted thebig ears trophy for the 15th time. The combination of a winning club and a relentless goalscorer made people fear the worst. But, as things go in football, the invention stopped working. Except for the European Super Cup and the Intercontinental Cup, the team came up empty-handed at the same time as Barça established itself as the team to beat.