As the Manchester United players departed the field after a training session, the Barcelona players walked onto the pitch at Washington DC's Fed Ex stadium in late July.

Some of the rivals let on to each other, the bigger names who'd lined up against each other at Wembley only two months previous. Many of the players didn't recognise their foes, such was the number of reserve players in both squads. No Barca players recognised Tom Cleverley and for sure no United players knew Isaac Cuenca.

Cuenca might have pinched himself to check he wasn't dreaming. A year earlier, Barcelona's B team boss

Never before in Pep Guardiola's glorious reign have Barcelona gone into a match six
points behind Real Madrid.

A year to the day since Barca demolished Madrid 5-0 in arguably the finest team
performance seen in football, the Catalans took to the field at home to another
Madrid-based side, the promoted upstarts with the three-sided stadium from the
other side of the tracks in Vallecas. The side whose hardcore are among the
most passionate fans in Spain, but fewer than 100 made the 1,200-kilometre round
trip. It didn't help that the date of the game had been switched three times.

Among them is a

Xabi Alonso tried to read a newspaper on Real Madrid's flight back from Valencia on Sunday.

These were important times for Spain, the early hours of a day in which the crisis-hit country would hold a general election. Alonso isn't short of a few bob, but he'll know people out of work in all social classes and possesses the intelligence to have a social conscience.

The Spain midfielder, 29, sat next to his best mate Alvaro Arbeloa, the defender wearing those oversized headphones favoured by footballers, and a watch the size of Big Ben.

Both wore identikit grey Real Madrid v-neck jumpers, more

Most of the
millions of tourists who visit Barcelona won't even realise that they've seen
L'Hospitalet. They pass through the densely-populated maze 250,000 call home on
the way from the airport to the city centre by road or rail, but few have any
reason to stop.

'Hospi' is
not the Barcelona of tree-lined boulevards and modernist architecture, but a
city of high-rise apartments which mushroomed in size when thousands of
immigrants moved to the city in search of a better life from other parts of
Spain and beyond from the 1950s onwards. Thus, there are a surprisingly high
number of Real Madrid

Saturday's defeat at Wembley wasn't Spain's finest hour, not that the reigning European and World Champions will be too troubled. Their form contrasts markedly between friendlies and where it matters, in competitive matches.

England, Italy, Argentina and Portugal have all beaten Spain in friendly games in the last year, while Mexico got a draw in Spain's first game after they were crowned world champions. So what?

In competitive matches, La Furia Roja just can't stop winning. The number one-ranked team in the world  have won every single competitive home match since a 1-0 loss to Romania in

A Catalan
family saunter up the tree-lined Rambla Catalunya in central Barcelona on
Sunday afternoon. Dad admires the giant Audi people carrier which stops in
traffic alongside them, while mum tries to stop her two kids from working out
who is driving behind the blacked out windows.

"It's
Messi!" shouts the oldest child. "It's Lionel Messi."

The world's
best footballer could have shot off in his high-powered motor, but instead
lowered the windows and posed for two quick photos with the boys, taken with
their father's phone. Messi's long-time girlfriend in the passenger seat smiles
and points

A
couple of years ago, I asked a Spanish footballer how he was finding life in
England after his move to a big club.

"You
get paid your full wages on time," he marvelled. "There are no
problems - the full amount of money goes straight into your bank."

The
player had come from Barcelona and had yet to suffer the fate of so many of his
team mates who'd left the Catalan club. Barça were reliable payers, but his
former team mates had horror stories of late payments, reduced payments,
diminished bonuses or, in the worst cases, no wages at all.

Unscrupulous
football club owners took  advantage of

The Catalan and Madrid media need to invent some fresh superlatives. So used are they to seeing their main sides win each week, the headlines focus on what they perceive as the unquestionable brilliance of Barca or Real Madrid.

Jose Mourinho will occasionally disrupt the self-aggrandising glorification with a paranoid rant or madcap antic, but normal order will soon be restored with Madrid's media bleating about the genius of Ronaldo et al and the Catalans paying homage to the best ever team in the world/solar system/universe.

Emphatic wins such as the 5-0 victory Barca enjoyed over Villarreal