Jose the dragon slayer! Madrid press glories in Clasico win

Madrid’s sporting press has been revelling in their side’s thumping 3-1 Copa del Rey semi-final second leg victory over Barcelona at the Camp Nou on Tuesday night, which sent Jose Mourinho’s side through to May’s final, while setting them up nicely for Wednesday’s Champions League last 16 second leg at Manchester United.

“Take that, and that, and that,” screamed the front of AS yesterday, while Marca went for a simple one word headline: ‘Romp’. Both covers had a large photo of a triumphant Cristiano Ronaldo.

Inside, the Madrid pundits gloried in a decisive victory for Mourinho’s men over the remnants of Josep Guardiola’s previously all-conquering team, while remembering that another battle against Alex Ferguson’s side was looming.

“If the objective of Real Madrid in signing Mourinho was to kill the dragon, that mission has been completed,” wrote Juanma Trueba in AS. “If it was to win the Champions League, then another chapter remains to be written.”

Marca continued its ambiguous take on the game inside, by claiming that “an unanswerable Madrid undressed and annihilated Barca at the Camp Nou”.

The Catalan football press were understandably less excited. Sport’s cover admitted that, “It was a disaster but... we must lift ourselves up”, while Mundo Deportivo editor Santi Nolla showed his concern: “For the first time in recent years, Madrid surpassed Barca in more than just the scoreboard. This is not the end of an era, but Barca have deficiencies which must be improved.”

AS’s Barcelona correspondent wrote that the myth “anybody” could coach great players like Lionel Messi and company had been disproved, given stand-in Jordi Roura’s struggles with Tito Vilanova absent through illness.

“‘Anybody’ could not tell Puyol he is no longer up to games at this level, Xavi that he cannot go into combat when not in top shape and Cesc that this is not Arsenal,” wrote Santi Gimenez. “At Barca, the players have made themselves lords of the manor. In La Liga this ‘self-management’ might be enough, but not on the biggest dates.”

Given their 16-point advantage in the table, Barca’s next big date is not Saturday’s La Liga Clasico at Madrid’s Estadio Santiago Bernabeu, but the clash with Milan in the Champions League in two weeks’ time, when they look very unlikely to turn around a 0-2 first leg deficit.

Mourinho and Ronaldo, meanwhile, go romping forward to Old Trafford.

l Barca are hoping star man Lionel Messi will return to training tomorrow before Saturday’s rematch with Madrid after he was laid low with an illness.