FOR A FEW years, it felt as if Barcelona-Real Marid games were the epicentre of elite football.
Particularly when Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo — widely regarded as the two greatest footballers of their generation — were in their prime, El Clasico felt like appointment viewing for any self-respecting football fan.
It was simply a chance to watch not just Ronaldo and Messi, but many of the world’s best players on the pitch at the same time.
Yet in more recent years, La Liga’s biggest derby has lost some of its lustre.
Real Madrid can still claim to be one of the best sides in the world — they have, after all, won two of the last three Champions League trophies.
Yet Barcelona are now a shadow of the Catalan side’s 2011 peak under Pep Guardiola and only starting to recover from years of financial mismanagement and poor decision-making at boardroom level.
These days, the closest equivalent to what Barcelona-Real Madrid represented in its pomp is surely Man City-Arsenal.
There are only a handful of sides that are realistically in with a chance of winning the Champions League this season, and these two Premier League sides are among the few candidates.
And as with El Clasico roughly a decade ago, today’s clash between the Premier League’s best sides over the last two seasons will feature several of the world’s top players.
There is a strong case to be made that Arsenal have both the strongest backline in Europe and a player, William Saliba, who is at least in the conversation for best defender in the world.
Just two points separated these two rivals last season as Man City secured an unprecedented fourth successive Premier League title.
A similarly marginal five points was the difference between City and Arsenal during the 2022-23 campaign, as the Gunners stuttered badly with the finishing line in sight.
One of the most impressive aspects of Mikel Arteta’s men’s near miss last season was how formidable a defensive outfit they became.
Arsenal conceded just 29 goals in 38 matches — 14 fewer than the previous season and a superior record to any other side in the top flight.
Saliba has been arguably the team’s key figure and a transformative player who has helped turn them from top-four hopefuls to title contenders.
The 23-year-old is only now in his third season of playing regularly with the Gunners. In five games, they only conceded once, with the France international completing every minute.
The Real Madrid-linked star similarly played all 38 matches in the last campaign. And tellingly, an injury suffered towards the end of the 2022-23 campaign coincided with the team’s dip in form.
Arsenal have invariably been clinical in the attacking third under Arteta, but Saliba has been integral in giving them an edge over their main rivals in the defensive part of the field.
Yet there is an argument to be made that building the team around Saliba and adhering to an increasingly pragmatic approach could prove costly at times.
Arsenal earned two clean sheets in two games against Man City last season, beating them 1-0 at home and drawing 0-0 away.
The North London club reacted to that point at the Etihad last March as if it were a victory.
But in the end, it cost them the league. Could Arteta have trusted their attacking players more to win them the game and played adventurously?
In response to any criticism, the Spanish coach might point to the 2022-23 season.
During that campaign, again their failure to claim enough points against City proved the difference between them winning and losing the title.
And in those fixtures, they tried a more open game plan. The result was 3-1 and 4-1 defeats in the respective fixtures, games that were all too reminiscent of the old, softer version of Arsenal towards the end of the Arsene Wenger era when they compulsively gave goals away cheaply.
The Gunners have toughened up since then, with Saliba to the fore.
Yet just as Arsenal have evolved significantly over the past two seasons, so have Man City.
The main reason, of course, has been the signing of superstar striker Erling Haaland.
Just as Saliba transformed Arsenal, the Norwegian has drastically impacted the way Guardiola’s team play.
Never has the manager implemented such a direct, physical style and this approach is primarily to get the best out of Haaland.
And what some initially speculated was a gamble has paid dividends. Just a year older than Saliba at 24, in his two full seasons in English football, the Norway international has finished top scorer in the Premier League on both occasions with 36 and 27 goals.
Few would bet against him repeating the feat this season. The former Dortmund star already has nine goals from four matches, a third of what he managed in the entirety of last season and leaving him six ahead of his nearest rivals.
Yet Arsenal were one of the few teams Haaland struggled against last year. In two games, he failed to find the net once, with the latter display prompting a memorable Roy Keane criticism. In contrast, he netted in both City’s wins during the 2022-23 campaign.
Whether or not Saliba and his teammates can combat Haaland today will likely again be a primary factor in determining the outcome.
It brings us back to the Barcelona-Real Madrid comparison and the essential difference with those classics of a bygone era.
Whereas the La Liga contests were often thrillers, the expectation is that today’s game will be another cagey affair — just like the two fixtures last season.
A week ago, Arsenal beat Tottenham with just 36% possession in a tight game of few chances. “Sometimes to win you have to do the ugly things and they love to do that,” Arteta said after a performance more reminiscent of a Jose Mourinho or George Graham team than his one-time mentor Guardiola.
Even Guardiola’s City are a mixture of technical and physical brilliance — in last season’s fixture, the coach played with four central defenders (Ruben Dias, Nathan Ake, Joško Gvardiol and Manuel Akanji) as well as two primarily defensive midfielders (Rodri and Mateo Kovačić) — a big difference to the Barca glory days with their less physically imposing midfield encompassing Sergio Busquets, Xavi and Andrés Iniesta.
So despite both coaches originally coming through the Barcelona system, this crucial early-season clash is unlikely to produce the type of beautiful football the Catalan outfit are famous for. Instead, it will be cat and mouse, defence against attack, Haaland versus Saliba.
