Guardiola delight at worldly Barca

Barcelona manager Pep Guardiola could barely contain his pride after the Catalan club utterly outclassed Real Madrid 5-0 on the world stage.

Monday’s ‘El Clasico’ between the bitter La Liga rivals was watched by a global television audience thought to be around 400 million.

Contrary to expectations of a hard-fought contest, those watching and those in attendance at the Camp Nou witnessed Barca rout Real Madrid in spectacular fashion.

The Spanish champions put five goals past the title hopefuls, handing treble-winning manager Jose Mourinho his worst-ever league result and his first loss at the Real helm.

A proud Guardiola, who won his fifth successive ‘El Clasico’ derby since taking over the reins at Camp Nou, was thrilled his players were able to showcase their attacking style of football to the world.

“We are proud because the world has seen us play the way we like to play,” Guardiola said.

“How we did it – that makes us proud. Now just let us sit back and enjoy that win – we’ll reflect and look at the whole game, but now it would be wrong not to revel in the win. Games like that happen very rarely indeed.”

Despite dominating Real so convincingly, Guardiola was keen to stress that the title race is still very much undecided.

“There are still a lot of games left to play in this league,” he said.

“We were the better team tonight, but both teams are at a very high level. We are only two points ahead and Real Madrid remain an impressive team.”

“I would like to take more points from Madrid but it’s not possible. That team, with all that power, are just two points behind, but we are satisfied.”