A cacophony of noise that only a Clasico crowd can produce greeted the players as they made their way out of the tunnel and onto an immaculate Camp Nou pitch.
This is a fixture that rarely disappoints (though by and large it did on Sunday), with emotions and feelings always heightened before and during the match.
Indeed, the energy that culers create surrounding the game when Los Blancos come to town can’t be matched.
The flip side of course is that you can hear a pin drop when Real score and once Ronald Araujo unluckily deflected into his own net against the run of play, that’s precisely what happened.