Zinedine Zidane broke unwritten rule in El Clasico after refusing to honour 'pasillo' tradition

Sunday's El Clasico is anything but a dead rubber and it's probably for the best.

Real Madrid will be four points behind La Liga leaders and bitter rivals Barcelona at kick-off.

With four matches each remaining including Sunday's meeting at the Nou Camp, closing the gap to a single point and dropping seven points behind Barcelona are worlds apart for Los Blancos.

Barcelona have had the edge in 2024-25, adding a hotly contested Copa del Rey final win to their advantage in the league table.

They can also boast two thumping wins, first a 4-0 thrashing of their rivals at the Bernabeu in October and then a 5-2 demolition job in the Super Cup in Jeddah in January.

But there will be no guard of honour from Real Madrid with the title race very much alive.

While the guard of honour has become a divisive subject in the Premier League in its relatively short history, the 'pasillo' was a La Liga tradition before former manager Zinedine Zidane instructed his Real Madrid team not to perform the gesture before a game against Barcelona in May 2018.

Neither the uproar nor the ignominy of facing Barcelona with nothing left to play for escaped the World Cup winner but he blamed the Blaugrana, not the situation, for the decision not to greet the opposition with the ludicrously overblown show of respect.

"The Blancos coach told the pre-match news conference that Barca's players deciding against honouring Madrid before last December's reverse fixture at the Bernabeu – the first match after Madrid lifted the FIFA Club World Cup – had set a precedent he did not want to go back on," wrote ESPN's Dermot Corrigan at the time.

Zidane told the press: "I am not the one who decides if there is a pasillo. We must explain the situation – after the Club World Cup I understand it was not important for them to do it. Some say it is as they were not in the competition, but that is not true. You have to win the Champions League to get to the Club World Cup, and we are all in that.

The guard of honour has also become a Champions League final tradition (Image: Alamy)

"So they did not do it. We respect what Barca have done, to win La Liga is the most difficult, I have always said that. I congratulate them.

"If they had done the pasillo... I am not breaking any tradition, but neither will I do something that they did not do."

Barcelona and Real Madrid have met 260 times in competitive matches, with the capital club winning 105 to Barcelona's 103.

But Barca's Lionel Messi is the fixture's all-time top goalscorer. His tally of 26 is eight better than the record of the legendary Alfredo di Stefano for Los Blancos.