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El Clasico to be played on Saturday, October 24 at 16:00 CEST

The first Clasico of the season between Barcelona and Real Madrid at the Camp Nou will take place on Saturday, October 24, at 16:00 CEST. This will be the first time that Zinedine Zidane and Ronald Koeman have faced off as coaches, with the Dutchman having replaced Quique Setien in the summer.

Therefore, there are now 11 days until the first LaLiga Santander Clasico of the campaign, with last year's edition at the Camp Nou - coming while Ernesto Valverde was still on the Barcelona bench - ending as a 0-0 draw.

Real Madrid and Barcelona have not seen each other since March 1 at the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu, a match that ended in a 2-0 victory for Zidane's side after goals from Vinicius Junior and Mariano Diaz.

In fact, that is the last game that was played at the Bernabeu before the coronavirus outbreak, with Los Blancos having decided to use the time since then to focus on the stadium's renovation work. This means that Real Madrid have been playing their home games at the Estadio Alfredo Di Stefano, which is located at their training base in Valdebebas.

Real Madrid will come into the Clasico after having played Cadiz in LaLiga Santander on Saturday, October 17, and then, on Wednesday, October 21, they have their Champions League group-stage opener at home to Shakhtar Donetsk.

Barcelona, meanwhile, will have an extra day's rest as after they play Getafe away from home on October 17, they host Ferencvaros in their Champions League curtain raiser on Tuesday, October 20. That gives Koeman's players four days to rest before the Clasico.

It will be interesting to see which players can recover to play in time, or which players may miss out between now and then. From Barcelona's perspective, they will no doubt want Marc-Andre ter Stegen to be back between the sticks. For Real Madrid, meanwhile, a lot of hopes will be placed on Eden Hazard being able to feature, even if it is from the bench.

Source: Marca