6 key battles to look out for this El Clasico

Goalkeeper resilience

Both Keylor Navas (L) and Claudio Bravo wil have to be on their toes

Sometimes, the outfield players play the game of their life, yet can’t make a show for it on the scorecard, thanks to a stubborn and resilient goalkeeper. In the 4-0 drubbing, Real Madrid actually had some chances to score, but Claudio Bravo was alert and didn’t give them any hope of a comeback.

Keylor Navas, on the other hand, had a poor game. He could have stopped at least two out of the four goals and it was the first time his weakness was exposed. Up until that game, Navas was in the form of his life and narrowly missed out (by 4 minutes) on the record of playing the most minutes without conceding.

On Saturday, these two will have a huge burden over them. In terms of individual ability, the Costa Rican is the better goalkeeper and if he has a good game, as he quite often does for Les Merengues, Barca will find it really hard to score.