{"id":4875,"date":"2014-10-20T04:28:38","date_gmt":"2014-10-20T04:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/?p=4875"},"modified":"2014-10-20T04:30:59","modified_gmt":"2014-10-20T04:30:59","slug":"barcelona-madrid-record-victories-ahead-of-el-classico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/football\/barcelona-madrid-record-victories-ahead-of-el-classico\/","title":{"rendered":"Barcelona, Madrid Record Victories Ahead of El Clasico"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Barcelona are hoping to break a record as well as inflict defeat on rivals Real Madrid in the first El Clasico of the season on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>The Spanish giants meet in the capital, with Barca currently four points clear of their rivals at the top of the table \u2013 thanks to a 3-0 home win over top-flight newcomers Eibar.<\/p>\n<p>Lionel Messi scored the final goal, adding to efforts from Xavi and Neymar, to bring his La Liga tally to 250 \u2013 putting him one behind all-time top scorer Telmo Zarra of Athletic Bilbao.<\/p>\n<p>The game is also set to mark Luis Suarez\u2019s first Barca appearance, with the ex-Liverpool striker having served his four-month ban.<\/p>\n<p>Real superstar Cristiano Ronaldo has already broken a record, however \u2013 the hottest scoring start to a Spanish top-flight season.<\/p>\n<p>The ex-Manchester United icon scored twice in a 5-0 thrashing of Levante, which made it 15 goals in seven games \u2013 beating Esteban Echevarria\u2019s record of 14 for Real Oviedo set in 1943.<\/p>\n<p>Barca boss Luis Enrique said: \u201cWe will be going to Real to win, as we have done over the last few years. But I don\u2019t think the game will be decisive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Barcelona are hoping to break a record as well as inflict defeat on rivals Real Madrid in the first El Clasico of the season on Saturday. The Spanish giants meet in the capital, with Barca currently four points clear of their rivals at the top of the table \u2013 thanks to a 3-0 home [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4876,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60,81],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4875"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4875"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4879,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4875\/revisions\/4879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}