Almost five years ago, football fans in England got their first real look at a wispy haired Argentine teenager from Rosario named Lionel Messi. The stage was the Uefa Champions League quarter finals, the opponents Chelsea.

Messi was a right-forward in Barcelona’s 4-3-3 formation, at a time when the idea of teams playing “inverted” wingers – that is, left-footed players on the right flank or vice versa – had not yet become a Europe-wide phenomenon (it is now pervasive, as the examples of Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Arjen Robben, and Adam Johnson attest to). Traditionally, wingers worked to get to the byline and then cross the ball into the box with their stronger foot, but the inverted winger, excuse the phrase, turned that on its head. Instead of seeking to beat their defender on the outside, inverted wingers tend to cut inside the full-backs responsible for them.

This wrinkle, along with Messi’s breathtaking control and searing pace, rendered the left side of Chelsea’s defense utterly dumbfounded that February night at Stamford Bridge. Asier del Horno, in particular, had little idea of how to cope with Messi, and resorted to fouling and kicking him incessantly. Eventually, Messi bamboozled him one too many times, del Horno lashed out, and bowled Messi over in a vicious tackle. Del Horno was sent off with a straight red card.

Simple story, right? Not so fast. Then-Chelsea coach Jose Mourinho had another view on things. “Barcelona is a cultural city with many great theatres,” he said at the time, “and this boy has learned very well. He's learned play-acting.” To accuse local favorite – Messi has been at Barcelona since he was 12 – of cheating to get a player sent off was bad enough, but the fact that it was Mourinho doing the accusing made it worse. There was already quite a history between Mourinho and the Catalan club.

The year before, when Chelsea and Barcelona had met in the Champions League, Mourinho accused the referee of being influenced by Barcelona manager Frank Rijkaard by speaking to him at half-time. The accusation led to death threats by Chelsea fans for the referee, who retired from football. To add insult to injury, Chelsea had eliminated Barca that year with the aid of a disputed goal at the end of the second leg in London. Mourinho rose quickly on most-hated lists in Barcelona. Recalling his time as an assistant to Barcelona managers Bobby Robson and Louis van Gaal, locals pejoratively referred to him as “the translator” and sang songs at the Camp Nou urging him to “go to the theater”, an obvious reference to the Messi jibe.

Fast forward five years, and it seems that Mourinho just can’t quit Barcelona. After his Inter Milan defeated Barcelona in the 2010 Champions League, he became the obvious choice to replace Manuel Pellegrini as coach of Real Madrid. In essence, the task was clear: you must beat Barcelona.

Since 2008, Barcelona had defeated Madrid four consecutive times – a new record for consecutive wins in El Clasico – and had won La Liga twice in a row. Madrid had spent about half a billion Euros in upgrading the talent on the pitch, but to no avail: Barca still thrashed them. The solution, it seemed, was obvious – upgrade the talent off the pitch, and the Barca puzzle would be solved. Cue Mouinrho’s arrival at Madrid. Midfield reinforcements from the German Bundesliga came in the form of Sami Khedira and Mesut Ozil, and the central defense was bolstered with the addition of Ricardo Carvalho, who had excelled under Mourinho at FC Porto and Chelsea.

This, then, was the stage for yesterday’s game between the Spanish giants: a hungry and fired-up Madrid, under a coach who had some relative success against Barca, coming to the Catalan capital to knock Barca back and off their perch. It had been 936 days since Real Madrid last beat Barca, and they weren’t planning on letting it become 937.

Based on yesterday’s results, however, there might be some time yet before Madrid are capable of beating Barcelona. By now, anyone who identifies as a football fan knows the result: a 5-0 thrashing for Mourinho’s men, with Barca’s staple quick passing and movement leaving Madrid in a dizzy stupor. When Barcelona beat teams heavily, it very rarely feels weighty or powerful; their victories tend to be smooth and silky, almost polite, deconstructions rather than bold assertions of superiority. Last night was no different.

On one level, the difference in the teams was simply a matter of intensity: Madrid had several players – the aforementioned Ozil, Khedira, and Carvalho, but also Argentina winger Angel di Maria – who had never played a Clasico before. Other than Carvalho, it is unlikely that the others have ever played a game that even comes close to matching the atmosphere and pressure of a Madrid-Barca game; simply put, they may well have been overawed by the occasion.

More important than that, however, was the disjuncture between Mourinho’s tactics on the one hand and his players’ strengths and weaknesses on the other.

At bottom, whatever success Mourinho has enjoyed against Barca has come as a result of a very basic framework: sit deep, don’t chase the ball, minimize the distance between the midfield and defensive lines, keep a compact shape, don’t get pulled out of position, and in the event Barca cough up the ball, use quick and pacy wing-forwards to hit them on the counter. Such a system can only work with a highly organized and disciplined defense and midfield, who must exhibit patience and intelligence when deciding whether to follow opposing ball-players. At Inter Milan last spring, Mourinho had such a team: world-class defenders such as Maicon, Lucio, Samuel and Zanetti, and combative and tough midfielders in Motta and Cambiasso.

Madrid, however, are not blessed with similar resources, at least at this point. Their “defensive” midfielders aren’t really defensive at all; Xabi Alonso is a world-class player, but he is a deep-lying playmaker in the Andrea Pirlo mould, while Khedira is a box-to-box player incapable of playing a holding role by himself. As important as this was the fact that Madrid’s full-backs – Marcelo and Sergio Ramos – are threats going forward but vulnerable in their primary job: defending. As a result, Madrid were often easily pulled this way and that, and left confused as to what the primary marking responsibilities were.

Barcelona’s midfield is easily the best in the world, and need little invitation to take advantage of the little holes and cracks that appear in flawed teams. The receive-pass-offer mantra, first brought to Barca by Rinus Michels and Johann Cruyff in the 1970s, is hammered into youth teamers at La Masia as an ideology. The result is that players brought through the academy play seamlessly with each other; it is no surprise that such players, like Messi, Xavi, Andres Iniesta, and Busquets can often appear as if they are passing the ball to the recipient before the latter even knows of it. One of the key differences between Barcelona’s players and most teams is that while most teams will pass the ball to a teammate, a Barca player will often pass the ball into space.

The question of space is crucial in any game of football, whether in a Clasico or a school match or on Play Station’s FIFA 2010. Essentially, the name of the game when in possession is to “create” space. By contrast, when defending, the object is to destroy space.

Last night, Barca found it devastatingly easily to create space by having Messi drop deeper into midfield, a role he now plays customarily, pulling center backs with him up the pitch, and leaving space behind for pacy forwards such as Pedro and David Villa (and runners from midfield such as Dani Alves or Iniesta or Xavi) to run into. They also constricted space very effectively by pressing Madrid all over the pitch when they had the ball. Add it all up, and you get the type of possession statistics – 67% for Barca, 33% for Madrid – that we saw last night.

Make no mistake, it was an historic shellacking for Madrid, right up there with a Cruyff-led 5-0 victory in the Dutchman’s first season at Barca, the 5-0 win by the early 1990s “Dream Team” and the 6-2 humiliation at the Bernabeu two years ago. After the fourth goal, an orgasmic Messi slide-rule pass to free Villa down the left flank, Barca essentially started toying with Madrid: back-heels, little flicks, and challenging passes, all encouraged by the Ole’s of the crowd.

The performance did not just reveal a difference in quality, but a difference in character. Madrid, knowing they were beaten, resorted to cheap bullying and violence. Alvaro Arbeloa was sent on by Mourinho seemingly only to injure a Barca player; he clattered into several of them and could easily have been shown multiple yellow cards despite only coming on in the 60th minute. Carvalho made a number of vicious tackles too, and also could (should?) have been sent off. Cristiano Ronaldo, ever petulant, shoved Barca coach Pep Guardiola, a strict no-no (though, in fairness, Guardiola was also in the wrong for not immediately handing the ball to Ronaldo). Most unseemly of all was Sergio Ramos’ conduct, who made a very dangerous tackle on Messi in the closing stages of the game, and then proceeded to shove away his national-team colleagues Carles Puyol and Xavi.

Despite their sublime dominance last night, Barcelona will know that Madrid are a better team than they have been the last two years, and that they will be better yet when they face off in April at the Bernabeu. The structure of La Liga means that this game was of massive importance in the context of the title race, but it can be overturned in five months’ time. Mourinho and his men know, however, they must improve for that to happen. As things stand, Barcelona are a class apart, in all senses of the term.

Ahsan Butt is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Chicago, and he blogs at Five Rupees.

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.