Barcelona have scored twelve goals in three league matches and conceded two, and both of those arrived tonight from the same player. Sergio Camello put Rayo Vallecano ahead on 12 minutes and pulled them back to 3-2 on 59. In between and after it, Barcelona scored five.
Nine minutes to turn the game over
Camello finished Álvaro García's pass into the top corner and the Camp Nou had seven minutes of quiet. Then Xavi Espart crossed for Raphinha on 19, and Marc Bernal found Lamine Yamal on 21, and the lead had changed hands before the half hour.
Both finishes were left footed and both came from the middle of the box, which is a strange sentence to write about a team playing a winger at centre forward and a right winger who cuts in.
The forward line that does not have a forward
Raphinha and Yamal scored two each, three days after Barcelona agreed a €10 million package with Arsenal for Gabriel Jesus, whose medical is tomorrow. Hansi Flick has spent the opening month solving the Robert Lewandowski problem by ignoring it: Raphinha through the middle, Yamal right, Anthony Gordon left, and 26 shots against Rayo with nine on target.
Gordon set up Raphinha's second on 71 on a fast break, and Karim Adeyemi, on for thirteen minutes, set up Yamal's second on 90 from outside the box. That is four goals and three assists from the front three and the two who replaced them.
The clean sheets had to end somewhere
Joan García had not picked the ball out of his net in La Liga until tonight, and he made three saves in a match Barcelona won by three. Camello's second was a header from Unai López's corner, which is the sort of goal a side conceding for the first time usually concedes.
Rayo were not passive. They had eleven shots and five on target, made 25 tackles to Barcelona's fifteen and hit 51 long balls, and Florian Lejeune, who turned Espart's low ball into his own net on 51, also had three shots at the other end. Daniel Cárdenas made five saves. Without them it would have been seven or eight.
Flick used the whole bench
Rodri came on for Bernal on 64, his second appearance since the €76.5 million move from Manchester City, with Fermín López on for Dani Olmo at the same time. João Cancelo and Adeyemi followed on 77, Hamza Abdelkarim on 86.
That is a squad being rotated in a match that was still 3-2 at the time of the first change, which tells you what Flick thinks of its depth.
Where it leaves them
Three wins from three, twelve scored, two conceded, top of La Liga on goal difference from Real Madrid, who also have nine points. The transfer window shuts at midnight tomorrow, and Gabriel Jesus arrives to compete with a forward line that has just scored five without him.
Valencia away on Sunday.
