Madrid: Real Madrid will not give La Liga champions Barcelona a guard of honour when the sides meet in El Clasico, coach Zinedine Zidane said on Saturday.
Barcelona wrapped up the title last weekend and face European champions Real on Sunday.
“After the Club World Cup they didn’t want to do it for us,” Zidane told a news conference.
“They might have said they didn’t do it because they weren’t in the competition, but that’s not true. You’ve got to win the Champions League to play in it and we’re both in the Champions League. It’s not up to me to decide about the guard of honour but they didn’t do it. We, with respect, won’t do it for them because they didn’t,” he said.
“We respect what Barca have done in winning the league, which for me is the most difficult and nicest thing you can do. But these things happen; if they’d have given us one, we weren’t going to break the tradition of doing so,” Zidane said.
The incident Zidane was referring to happened before the Clasico on December 23 when, having returned from the United Arab Emirates as Club World Cup winners, Barcelona elected not to give Real a guard of honour as is traditional in Spain. Barca won the match 3-0.
