A derby match between Barcelona and Real Madrid is one of world football's great clashes but today's match has had the tension turned up even further after recent events.
Real comfortably eased past local rivals Atletico 2-0 on Wednesday to grab a two point lead at the top of the Spanish first division while Barca crashed the same night 5-1 in Malaga, their worst defeat for nine seasons.
The contrasting fortunes of the two giants of Spanish football on Wednesday now means that everything is at stake in the Nou Camp.
The reigning league champions from the Spanish capital can consolidate their lead with a victory but they have not won in the Catalan citadel for 20 years.
However, Barcelona coach Frank Rijkaard will not want to go down in history as the man who was at the helm when that historic streak came to an end.
Rijkaard also knows that a draw will not be enough to satisfy the club's impatient and critical fans and ease the pressure on him, with Barca having only taken one point from their last three games.
"We have to raise our heads before Saturday," said Rijkaard, acknowledging that his squad's morale had been decimated on Wednesday.
"The only good thing I can take from a defeat like this is that things cannot get much worse."
Giving Barca fans' spirits a small lift is the prospect that both Carles Puyol and Ronaldinho may return for today's match after injuries caused them to miss the disastrous trip to Malaga.
Rijkaard's opposite number at Real also has a psychological matters on his hands but the tasks facing Carlos Queiroz are of a rather different nature.
"Beating Atletico was an important victory and will calm our nerves ahead of the derby. To win like that was a big confidence boost, now the players have to keep their feet on the ground," said the Portuguese coach on Thursday.
Adding spice to the mix will be the fact that it will be the first derby match for England captain David Beckham.
Beckham is no stranger to the Nou Camp and arguably his finest hour was there in 1999 when he won the Champions League with his former club Manchester United.
"I've been dreaming about this match," said Beckham on Thursday.
"It will be different to anything I've ever experienced before and if we win then it will be historic, and not just for me but the whole of the Real squad and our fans."
The night will certainly be unforgettable, although probably not in quite the fashion Beckham seemed to expect, with a capacity 98,000 baying Catalans often posing dangers that extend beyond the Real players' ear drums.
Last season former Barca player Luis Figo was pelted with various objects when he tried to take corners, including a whisky bottle and a pig's head -- and Barcelona have still yet to serve the ground closure order that was imposed after the game.
In 1997, Real defender Roberto Carlos was floored and lost a small chunk of his scalp when a metal cigarette lighter found its target.
"I am not worried. It's my job to take corners and why wouldn't I take them in Barcelona?" Beckham asked.
Nevertheless, Beckham may sadly, like many Real players before him, find an answer to his question tonight despite Barca putting additional police and stewards on duty after the incidents of last season.
Other games almost pale into insignificance in Spain on the weekend when the two old enemies meet but if Real should slip up then Valencia, two points in arrears of Madrid, could reap the rewards.
The 2001-02 champions play host Athletic Bilbao and will regain the top spot if they beat the Basques and Barca thwart Real's ambitions of ending their 20-year win drought.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier