1st half
Suárez slotted home to give Barça a 1–0 lead on 11 minutes. Sergi Roberto picked up the ball near midfield and sliced through the Madrid defence with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel before passing back across the grain to Suárez, who finished with aplomb.
Then in the 39th minute, Neymar made it 2–0 after taking a pass from Iniesta and firing low with enough pace to beat Navas, who couldn’t get a big enough piece of the ball to keep it from finding the net.
The sequence was a big dent in Real Madrid’s morale, ending the only sustained pressure that the all-whites had been able to generate all night long.
Claudio Bravo was superb in goal for FC Barcelona. He made several brilliant saves to preserve a clean sheet. Real Madrid’s James Rodríguez, Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema were all stoned by Bravo in the second half.
2nd half
After the break, in the 53rd minute Neymar left a no-look drop pass for a hard charging Andrés Iniesta, who met the ball in stride and fired a rocket past a hopelessly diving Navas and into the upper right corner for a 3–0 lead. It was Iniesta’s third career goal against Real Madrid, and his second at the Bernabéu.
Lionel Messi replaced Ivan Rakitic in the 57th, giving the four-time Ballon d’Or winner his first minutes since going out with an injury on 26 September. The addition of a surprisingly spry Messi to FC Barcelona’s already perplexing attack put the Madrileños even further into submission.
In the 74th minute, Suárez netted Barça’s 4-0 of the night. With both Suárez and Neymar bearing in on goal unfettered, Suárez chose to keep it himself. The Uruguayan juked Navas to the ground for chipping over the keeper and into the back of the net.
With Real Madrid facing the ignominy of a whipping in front of their home fans, tempers began to flare, and in the 84th minute Isco was shown a straight red card for coming high on Neymar and spiking the league’s leading goalscorer square on the knee.
