Atletico Madrid will attempt to stretch their unbeaten run at the Bernabeu in La Liga to six matches when they visit bitter rivals Real Madrid in the Madrid derby on Saturday night.
Incredibly, Atletico have not lost away to Real in the league since the 2012-13 campaign and have been victorious in three of the five matches since then.
Atletico will enter the match off the back of three straight wins in all competitions, including a 3-0 home success over Huesca in La Liga on Tuesday night, which moved them onto 11 points for the season.
Real are above Atletico in the table, but Julen Lopetegui's side suffered a shock 3-0 defeat at Sevilla on Wednesday night, and there will be huge pressure on the European champions to triumph this weekend.
The two sides boast some of the best attackers and sturdiest defenders in European football, and therefore can provide an extremely strong combined XI. Here, Sports Mole selects the best team from both squads, using only players available for this weekend's match.
Real Madrid and Atletico boast two of the outstanding goalkeepers in world football, but Jan Oblak just about edges out Thibaut Courtois in this particular team. Oblak has quickly developed into an outstanding stopper during his time at Atletico, and is picked ahead of Courtois, who has not made the best of starts to life at the Bernabeu.
Injuries to Marcelo and Dani Carvajal mean that it is quite straightforward to select the defence. There has perhaps not been a better central defender than Diego Godin over the last five years, and the South American deserves his spot alongside Raphael Varane and Sergio Ramos at the back. The Real Madrid pair were a touch shaky against Sevilla, but Ramos has three goals to his name this season and is a true leader, while Varane is perhaps the outstanding young centre-back in world football.
The midfield is tougher to select, however, with a lot of talent to choose from. Luka Modric, the recently-crowned best player in the world, is an obvious pick. Modric is joined by Real teammate Toni Kroos, while there are two from Atletico as Koke and Saul Niguez make the XI. The pair are both key to Spain's future as well as Atletico's, and Saul would provide the legs as part of a midfield which could easily switch to a diamond rather than a flat four.
Diego Costa and Karim Benzema are both unfortunate to miss out on spots in the final third, but the former has not yet scored in La Liga this season, and there remain question marks over the latter. Benzema has made a strong start to the campaign, but this particular XI needs a centre-forward capable of dropping in.
Marco Asensio and Gareth Bale both struggled against Sevilla on Wednesday, but the pair have been impressive early on, and would play right and left of Antoine Griezmann in this XI. Griezmann famously snubbed a move to Barcelona in the summer before helping France win the 2018 World Cup.
