As it stands, Sunday's Clasico between Barcelona and Real Madrid will go ahead as planned. But who knows what might happen between now and the scheduled kick-off at 16:15 local time?
Madrid could take issue with the identity of the match referee. After all, Alejandro Hernandez Hernandez has taken charge of 35 of their Liga games in the past and they've lost nine of them - the kind of scary statistic that suggests either incompetence or corruption (at least in the mind of Madridistas). After all, when Madrid lose, it's never their fault. The referee is always to blame, which is why they're presently leading a campaign to overhaul the entire system of officiating in Spain.
It's a thankless task - quite literally. Indeed, Madrid are copping quite a lot of flak for raging against a machine that many of their rivals would argue has benefited Los Blancos more than any other club in Spain.
As the Liga leaders, Barcelona have been particularly incensed by their great rivals' constant complaints, which are seen as a rather obvious attempt to discredit the Catalans' seemingly imminent championship success. Barca would also argue that they don't just have to deal with biased refereeing in Spain, as they feel that they're being shafted in Europe, too - as supposedly underlined by Tuesday's Champions League loss at San Siro.
There is still hope that Sunday's post-match discourse will be dominated by debates over the greatness of Lamine Yamal, Raphinha, Pedri, Vinicius Jr, Kylian Mbappe or Jude Bellingham, but while the game at Montjuic really could be one for the purists, it feels far more likely that it will prove yet another Clasico for the conspiracy theorists...
