Forget the fever. The only thing worth arguing about before kickoff at Camp Nou is whether Andriy Lunin can do it again, and the answer is yes.
The club confirmed Sunday, hours before kickoff: Thibaut Courtois is out of the Clasico with flu. He was on the squad list Saturday, off it Sunday morning, a genuine last-minute withdrawal, with Illia Voloshyn called up to the bench as cover. Whether it's really flu or something else, the reporting says flu and nothing contradicts it. Take it at face value.
What matters is that Madrid are now handing the biggest club fixture on the calendar to a goalkeeper who hasn't played a competitive minute since early May, when he started a 2-0 win over Espanyol. That's nearly six months of rust against a Barcelona side that entered Matchday 10 with a perfect nine-from-nine start and five straight league wins, six points clear of third-placed Real Madrid. Atletico beat Deportivo on Saturday to move within two of the top. Those numbers will shift once this round finishes, but the stakes won't: lose here and the gap gets ugly fast.
Still, the funereal mood around Madrid is overcooked. People acting like the match is already gone are ignoring the one thing Lunin has actually proven he can do. This is the goalkeeper who, with Madrid's Champions League hanging by a thread, saved two penalties in the shoot-out at Manchester City in 2024 to dump out the holders and send Madrid to the semifinals. That's the kind of night that sticks with you. It shows he performs when the building is shaking, which is exactly the situation he's walking into at Camp Nou.
He's no stranger to this fixture either. A start here would be his fifth Clasico, and he's won more of them than he's lost against Barcelona, even though he's never kept a clean sheet in one. Against this Barcelona attack, the realistic target is a composed, big-game performance that keeps Madrid in it. That's his pattern, and it's enough.
Madrid are stretched elsewhere, too. Vinicius Junior is suspended, serving a four-game domestic ban, and Rodrygo is out long-term with an ACL injury he's expected to recover from late this year. It's Mourinho's first Clasico XI since February 2013, and he's building it around a keeper making a cold return and an attack missing two Brazilians.
If this goes wrong tonight, don't aim at Lunin first. Aim at the structure above him. A club with Real Madrid's money, going into the season's first Clasico, relying on a starter whose availability flips overnight and backed up by a keeper who hasn't played since spring, built this risk itself. That's a squad-planning failure.
My call: Lunin delivers again, the way he usually does when the lights are brightest, imperfect but good enough. If he doesn't, blame falls on whoever let Madrid's goalkeeping depth get this thin for a match this big. Lunin is just the man they're asking to bail them out.
