El Clásico Sunday, The Ballon d’Or Monday — And The Voting Is Already Closed

Sunday’s El Clásico at Camp Nou (4 p.m. Eastern, ABC, ESPN Deportes and ESPN+) matches the league’s best team against its most decorated fixture. Barcelona are 9-0-0 with 27 points, a +30 goal difference and 39 league goals. Real Madrid are third on 21 points, one behind Atlético. A Barcelona win opens a nine-point gap over Madrid; a Madrid win cuts it to three. It is the 265th competitive Clásico. Barcelona have won their last 23 La Liga home matches and six of the last seven meetings in all competitions.

On the visiting bench, a familiar figure: this is José Mourinho’s first Clásico since March 2013. In his first spell at Madrid his record against Barcelona was five wins, six draws and six losses in 17 meetings — but he was unbeaten in his last five.

Both sides come in off the Champions League, in opposite directions. Barcelona lost 4–2 at Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday, their first defeat of the season in any competition: 19-year-old Xavi Espart scored on his Champions League debut and Lamine Yamal equalised before late goals from Vitinha and Fabián Ruiz. Barcelona have now gone 18 straight Champions League games without a clean sheet. Coach Hansi Flick: “PSG showed they were better than us… Titles aren’t won in October.” Madrid beat Leipzig 4–1 on Wednesday, their fourth straight win in all competitions.

Madrid will be without Vinícius Júnior, who serves the second match of a four-game domestic suspension. On October 10 against Villarreal, Vinícius — who had started on the bench — came on and appeared to score off a Jude Bellingham pass; the video review found he had pulled defender Nathan Saliba’s hair in the build-up. The goal was disallowed and he was sent off, and the referee’s report cited aggressive protests in which he had to be held back by teammates. On October 14 the federation’s disciplinary committee set the ban at two matches for violent conduct and two for the protests. He misses Barcelona, Racing Santander on November 1 and Valencia on November 7; the ban is domestic only, so he remained available in Europe. He apologised on social media; Mourinho skipped his post-Villarreal press conference in protest; the ban stands. Vinícius has one goal in nine appearances this season.

The preview duel everywhere is Yamal against Kylian Mbappé. Raphinha is fit again, Yamal has eight league goals, and Barcelona’s Dani Olmo is out after being injured in Paris. Reuters reports the record €140 million signing Yan Diomande may start for Madrid to give the side balance.

Monday night brings the other prize: the Ballon d’Or, at the London Palladium — the award’s 70th edition and its first in London, staged as a tribute to Stanley Matthews, the first winner in 1956. The 30-man shortlist was revealed on September 8: Paris Saint-Germain placed a record 10 nominees, Lionel Messi is back after two years off the list, Cristiano Ronaldo is omitted for a fourth straight year, and Raphinha’s absence was widely noted as a snub. One hundred journalists vote, and the voting closed on September 28 — the winner is already decided, and Sunday’s match cannot affect it. Reuters presents Yamal and Mbappé as the leading contenders, with last year’s winner Ousmane Dembélé and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia also named. The framing is not uniform: talkSPORT pushes Harry Kane, who scored 61 goals in 51 Bayern appearances last season, and prediction markets swung toward Kane in mid-October. Those are market prices, not votes.

Paris has its own troubles going into the weekend: in Tuesday’s win over Barcelona, Kvaratskhelia ruptured the ACL in his right knee — PSG confirmed he faces surgery, and the club gave no return date — and Dembélé and Marquinhos are out “several weeks” with thigh injuries, per the club. PSG’s league match against Lyon was moved from Sunday to Monday at the request of the Paris police amid demonstrations in the capital, which puts it up against the ceremony.