Barcelona 5 - Espanyol 1

The game started poorly for Barcelona, and Sergio Garcia scored the first goal, but eventually Barcelona found the rhythm and at the end finished the game with a victory and Messi scored three to become La Liga record goalscorer.

This was the first time since 2009 that Espanyol scored at Camp Nou, since another La Masia youth football school graduate, Ivan de la Peña, scored twice.

Garcia ended this situation at 13th minute and Espanyol posed a significant danger against Barcelona net in counter-attack; but The Catalans were able to level the match just before the half time with a Messi strike.

The second arrived early in the start of the second half, again thanks to Messi and the third came from Gerard Pique.

Espanyol never recovered from this two scores and never posed a thread to Barcelona. Pedro scored the fourth just 14 minutes before the end of the match and Messi soon after scored his third and fifth for Barcelona.

Espanyol were lucky not to finish the match with only 10 men in the 49th minute as Eric Bailly stopped Neymar with a fault when the Brazilian was going directly to goal.

There where some warning sings at the start of the match, and more doubts after Espanyol scored the first, but little by little Barcelona started to dominate the game and had their opportunities with a free-kick thrown by Messi that struck the crossbar, followed minutes later by an opportunity for Luis Suarez.

The pressure was building up for the locals until Messi was able to restore parity just before half-time with a 25 yards unstoppable shot directed to the bottom-left corner of the net. Messi scored also the second shortly after after a pass from Suarez, the third came from Pique as he headed Rakitic’s corner into the net.

With the victory in hand, Pedro scored the fourth thanks to Alba’s cross field pass at 77th minute and Messi completed the fifth just four minutes later with a combination with Pedro playing a one-two into the area.

With this victory, Barcelona is still only two points behind current La Liga leader Real Madrid.

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