Barcelona's dream is Real Madrid's worst nightmare! Winners and losers as red-hot Marcus Rashford surely seals permanent transfer by delivering La Liga title in El Clasico

How mightily deserved this was for the German. His Barcelona tenure has been more or less electric from day one. He has taken a possession-first side that looked a little lost and made them a thrilling attacking unit.

This was, quite sneakily, one of the best showings of the season; for all of the talk of Madrid's injury issues, Barca, too, were thin up front, at right-back, and in midfield. There was no Lamine Yamal, not much Raphinha, and Robert Lewandowski came off the bench.

Throw in the tragic news that Flick's father passed away overnight, and this seems a remarkable job of coaching on the day. It's now back-to-back titles, and a third is surely in sight in 2026-27 given the state Madrid find themselves in. He's here until at least 2028, and the Blaugrana will be thrilled to have him.

What was Arbeloa really supposed to do here? The Spaniard was handed a bit of an impossible job in the first place, tasked with conjuring miracles out of a group that didn't really want to play for anyone but themselves. He decided to go for a similar approach here as he has done for months - get his best names out on the pitch and hope they can piece something together. And they couldn't.

Arbeloa spent most of the game spectating rather than coaching, a man watching from afar while a football match happened - an event totally out of his control. To be clear, neither this loss nor this season is on him (despite his repeated insistence that he should take the blame).

Madrid are wounded, outclassed, and rotten to the core. Arbeloa has just been a helpless bystander, and so he was once again on Sunday night.

Amid all the talk about his future at Barcelona and lingering doubts over whether the club will take up a €30 million (£26m/$35m) option to buy him from Manchester United, this was the best possible response from Rashford on one of club football's very biggest stages.

Starting out of position on the right of Barca's front three, the Englishman was electric from the first whistle, causing Madrid left-back Fran Garcia all sorts of problems. His free-kick was unorthodox, whipped across the face of Courtois' goal and into the far top corner, but showed just how intelligent he can be, as well as being another devastating example of his ball-striking ability.

If the Man Utd loanee is playing for his future at Spotify Camp Nou then he has hit form at just the right time (four goals and one assist in his last six league games), and this crowning performance in El Clasico should go some way to making a cut-price permanent transfer a no-brainer for Barcelona's cash-strapped decision-makers.

Long before a ball was kicked in Sunday night's Clasico it was evident that at least one big name would be conspicuously absent from the contest. That list was headlined by Kylian Mbappe, who failed to recover from a hamstring injury in time to play.

While it was already bad enough that Real were shorn of La Liga's top-scorer in a must-win clash with their fierce rivals, the news came against the backdrop of the furore surrounding the Frenchman's decision to jet off on holiday to Italy with his girlfriend Ester Exposito rather than rehabilitate at the club's Valdebebas base. And that's after he was reportedly involved in an ugly spat with a member of Madrid's backroom staff.

The attacker had returned to training ahead of the showdown with Barca, having not featured since the meeting with Real Betis on April 24, but clearly wasn't deemed fit enough. Given the scrutiny around Los Blancos at the moment, this probably isn't the last we've heard of this particular saga.

One subplot of many in the Clasico, this will be considered a significant night for English football as three of the country's biggest names turned out in what is arguably the biggest fixture in club football for the first time ever.

Barca's Man Utd loanee Rashford and Real Madrid duo Jude Bellingham and Trent Alexander-Arnold can consider themselves trailblazers as they all started under the lights - a reflection of the calibre of player England has produced in recent years.

Three Lions boss Thomas Tuchel would have been a keen observer as a result, and Rashford's star turn will have caught his eye for sure.

Valverde would have been a key figure in the Madrid line-up at Spotify Camp Nou, but - like Mbappe - he was ruled out long before kick-off after finding himself at the centre of an incredibly ugly dressing room incident this week.

A clash with his midfield colleague Aurelien Tchouameni - who, incidentally, was involved in Sunday's XI - resulted in the Uruguayan being hospitalised with a head injury after he "accidentally hit a table" at Valdebebas, albeit he denied they actually came to blows.

Whatever happened behind closed doors, Valverde was needlessly kept out of a crucial game for his side due to concussion protocols, even if there was only pride on the line as Real looked to avoid handing their champions-elect arch rivals the title on a plate.