Barcelona cruised to a 3-0 win at home to the ten men of Elche on Saturday afternoon, strolling to La Liga’s summit against the team propping up the table.
The Catalans bounced back from their Champions League frustrations against Bayern Munich with an easy victory against opponents that conspired to make the afternoon as straightforward as possible for their hosts.
Elche arrived at Camp Nou – a ground at which they have never won – with one La Liga point and a game plan. Sitting in a passive low block, the visitors laboured over each restart almost from kick-off, willing the seconds to spill away.
However, the red card captain Gonzalo Verdu received in the 14th minute for rugby-tackling Robert Lewandowski to the turf was not part of Elche’s pre-match script.
Down to ten within a quarter of an hour, Elche’s timid 5-3-1 didn’t even close the space between the lines. Pedri could receive the ball on the edge of the box and calmly slide it to Alejandro Balde on the left at his leisure. The academy product fired a pass across the area which Memphis Depay missed but Lewandowski bundled in after 33 minutes.
Depay was unquestionably the target of Balde’s pass barely five minutes later. Accepting the ball in the box with his back to goal and John Nwankwo breathing down his neck, Depay twisted away from the defender trying to ascertain his cologne, blasting a shot as vicious as his spin into the roof of the net.
On the cusp of half-time, Elche’s Francisco had joined his skipper in the changing rooms. Pedri had a third for Barcelona ruled out for offside but the visiting manager was punished for his apoplectic reaction before VAR intervened.
The first two scorers combined as Barcelona resumed their scoring within three minutes of the restart. Depay made a nuisance of himself in the six-yard box, forcing the ball loose for Lewandowski to stride onto, sweeping in his second and Barcelona’s third.
With such a healthy advantage and scant sign of Elche offering so much as a limp prod towards goal – the visitors didn’t attempt a single shot until the 90th minute – Barcelona slowed the contest to a crawl, cranking up the tempo when the mood struck them.
Lewandowski was uncharacteristically wasteful on his return to Bayern Munich in midweek but brushed aside any cobwebs as he took his tally to 11 in eight outings – even if he did squander multiple opportunities to nab his first La Liga hat-trick on Saturday.
With Pedri pulling the strings and Raphinha injecting more urgency…
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