Real Madrid Thinking A Lot About Not Thinking About Barcelona

Real Madrid will square off against arch-nemesis Barcelona in the Spanish Supercup (Supercopa de España) on August 14th and 17th--that's a fact. It's also a big game, an important test for Mourinho's men going into the new season, and an important opportunity to gain a psychological advantage over their only real rival for the Liga BBVA title: Barça are favored, so Madrid have very little to lose, especially considering the relative unimportance of the title.

But you would have no idea that Madrid were even thinking about this match if you happened to catch some of their post-training comments today in China. In fact, you'd get the acute sensation that some of them were intentionally not thinking about the game:

Xabi Alonso: "We have a good base, and with the new signings we'll try to get better. Our objective is to get better as a group so we can make a run at every single competition. We're not thinking about Barcelona. That's not important. What is important is trying to get better little by little. We need to know ourselves better in order to progress." Source: Real Madrid Fanboy Tabloid #1.

Ok, so Xabi is definitely living in a state of denial, and his teammates more or less set him straight:

Casillas, for example, definitely has his head on straight. While he refused to comment about Barcelona, Iker was happy to talk about the impending Supercopa:

"We're not obsessed with the Supercopa, though we are obsessed in arriving at those games, at that title, in the best possible form. We have to try to arrive at those matches in the best possible shape and form. We work as hard as we possibly can for that." Source: You Know Who.

Sergio Ramos was the only one who didn't seem to be buying into the whole "let's not talk about Barcelona" message:

"We're not ready to talk about [Madrid's possibilities against Barcelona this year], we're only thinking about correcting our problems from last year and arriving to the match against Barcelona, the moment of truth, in the best possible form so we can really do our best and put on a good show." Source: Yeah, I'm only using one paper.

Apparently, though, Barcelona are also getting peppered with questions about Madrid--in particular Pep Guardiola, who had to restate that he's "not tired" of answering questions about Mourinho.