The decision was made in the week after the referee’s committee could not clearly judge an elbow from Real Madrid’s Arda Güler on Sevilla’s Peque Fernández, despite 26 cameras in operation at the Santiago Bernabéu on 18 October. VAR could not find a clean angle of the moment of contact, the shots were distant, and the Turkish midfielder stayed on the pitch in a game Real Madrid won 4-1.

A week on, LaLiga has gone the other way. For the first Clasico of the season, the league is deploying between 35 and 40 cameras, the maximum allowed under its internal A+ classification, up from the roughly 22 used in standard Category A fixtures and the 26 that struggled with the Güler contact.

Individual tracking for the two Ballon d’Or picks

Two of those cameras will do nothing else than follow Lamine Yamal and Kylian Mbappé.

The dedicated lenses will track the Barcelona winger and the Real Madrid forward through every phase of play, on and off the ball, for the full match. Ultra-long-range optics and cinematic cameras will supplement the standard rig, and the entire broadcast will be produced in 4K.

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The timing is not an accident. Both players are among the front-runners for the Ballon d’Or, which will be awarded the following evening at the London Palladium, the first time the ceremony has left Paris in its 70-year history. Harry Kane has been installed as bookmakers’ favourite after his 2025-26 season for Bayern Munich and England, with Yamal among the leading challengers and Mbappé also inside the top five. Last year’s winner, Ousmane Dembélé, is also on the 30-man shortlist.

Voting from the international jury of journalists closed before the Clasico, and the Camp Nou performance will not count towards the result. The result will be announced at around 8pm local time on Monday.

Why the Güler row mattered

Sevilla’s manager Luis García Plaza was blunt in the aftermath of the Bernabéu match, telling Goal his side had been “robbed”. The complaint focused on an action behind the referee that the broadcast simply did not capture: the cameras were following the attacking play, VAR works off the world feed rather than every lens in the stadium, and the two minutes and 20 seconds the officials spent cycling through the available angles produced nothing conclusive. Güler escaped without a yellow card and scored later in the match.

Camp Nou on Sunday

Kick-off at the Spotify Camp Nou is at 9pm local time on Sunday, 25 October. It will be José Mourinho’s first Clasico since returning to the Real Madrid bench, and Hansi Flick’s first against him. Real Madrid lead LaLiga after nine rounds; Barcelona sit behind them going into matchday 10.

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