Pedri scurries towards the Real Madrid box and exchanges passes first with Ousmane Dembélé, then with Lionel Messi, but Ferland Mendy runs the Barcelona youngsters off it before he can pull the trigger.
Back come Barça, though, and Jordi Alba very nearly lays on the opener for Dembélé!
The Argentine is given far too much time and space to turn and scamper at a back-pedalling Madrid defence, before slipping Alba into crossing space on the left-hand side of the area.
The left-back pulls it back first-time, but with Dembélé waiting to turn it home at the far post, Thibaut Courtois just manages to get a hand to the cross to divert it away from the Frenchman!
Óscar Mingueza then blasts the loose ball over the bar. Barcelona’s players want a yellow card for Fede Valverde after the Uruguayan brings his midfield counterpart down, but referee Jesús Gil Manzano lets Valverde away with a minor ticking-off.
It’s been all Barcelona ball so far… but Real Madrid are oh, so close to catching Marc-André ter Stegen out and getting Karim Benzema through on goal.
The Barça keeper plays a slightly lackadaisical ball out from the back that an alert Casemiro gets to before Sergio Busquets. He plays it first-time to Benzema on the edge of the box, but the Frenchman clearly wasn’t expecting a gift of such epic proportions and can’t get his feet sorted out in time to control.
— Troll Football (@UKTrollFootball) April 10, 2021