Lionel Messi, who's been pretty quiet so far, tries to race down the centre of the pitch, but his run is brought to a crunching halt by Sergio Ramos, who puts in a fine tackle and launches a counterattack in the process. It looks like the ball's going to roll through to Karim Benzema at the top of the box, but Sergio Busquets saves the day with a last-ditch interception.
Andres Iniesta contrives to launch the next Real Madrid attack with an incredibly poor pass in the middle, setting off a passage of play that ends up with Benzema shooting from just outside the area and forcing Victor Valdes into a pretty routine save. It's back and forth stuff, quite good football so far, and we haven't had too much crankiness as of yet. Oh, and Barcelona have had a goal rightly disallowed for offside. It wasn't very close.
A few minutes later, Busquets is booked for hacking down Cristiano Ronaldo on the Real Madrid left. Naughty foul, but probably worth it to stop the Portuguese from pushing down that flank. Fifteen minutes in and it's still 0-0.
We have live game coverage in our Barcelona vs. Real Madrid, 2012 El Clasico StoryStream. For more on the two teams, head over to Real Madrid blog Managing Madrid and FC Barcelona blog Barca Blaugranes.