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Zidane proud of Real Madrid Clasico victory over Barca and hails Vinicius display.

Los Blancos bounced back from their Champions League 2-1 loss to Manchester City - to secure a 2-0 home-win over bitter rivals Barcelona.

Zinedine Zidane's side bounced back from their Champions League defeat to Man City to secure a 2-0 win over bitter rivals Barcelona. [Getty]
Zinedine Zidane's side bounced back from their Champions League defeat to Man City to secure a 2-0 win over bitter rivals Barcelona. [Getty]

Real Madrid head coach Zinedine Zidane was proud of his players after they beat Barcelona in the LaLiga El Clasico on Sunday night.


Los Blancos bounced back from their Champions League 2-1 loss - to Premier League champions Manchester City - to secure a 2-0 home-win over rivals Barcelona.


Second-half goals from Vinicius Junior and substitute Mariano Diaz at the Santiago Bernabeu helped Real Madrid leapfrog the defending champions Barca at the top of the LaLiga table.


And following the match, Zidane expressed his delight in his post-match press conference: "The reaction today has been important. The dressing room is not touched. It was a complicated week, but we prepared this game well. That means the players are in and want.


"We played 78 very good minutes and in the end we lost. Today we win playing well from start to finish. We need to stick to what we believe, but we know that it will be hard until the very end. We need to prove ourselves every time we play.


"We deserved the victory because of everything we did both defensively and offensively," the Frenchman added. "The first half was even and our press up front was not perfect. In the second half we improved our press and we were better up top.


"We really pushed them hard and almost overwhelmed them. These are three important points because it has been a difficult week and today we had the opportunity to change that. It's three points and we regained the lead, but we're going to have to fight to the end.


"We're happy because we've all shown that we've done very well and I'm proud of them because it's not easy to win like this. Our strength today was very important. The first thing is to defend well together and then we know that at any moment we can have opportunities to score goals.


"The second half was ours. We had a lot of chances to score and we netted twice. We kept a clean sheet and [Thibaut] Courtois was instrumental in that. We won the game as a team today."


Real Madrid's Vinicius Jr, Sergio Ramos, Dani Carvajal and Isco celebrate. [Getty]
Real Madrid's Vinicius Jr, Sergio Ramos, Dani Carvajal and Isco celebrate. [Getty]

Vinicius, who broke the deadlock in the 71st minute, became the youngest Clasico goalscorer, surpassing Barca captain Lionel Messi, and the 19-year-old received praised from his boss Zidane who said: "Vinicius was good and he scored an important goal in an important game. I'm happy for him. He was good offensively and defensively he did a great job helping Marcelo with [Nelson] Semedo.


"He has conditions, but he is very young and sometimes the criticism is difficult. He has to live with that because he is at Real Madrid."



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