Barcelona beat Elche 3-1 to stay in touch with La Liga leaders Real Madrid

Dominant triumph moves defending La Liga champions to 2nd spot successful the standings, 5 adrift of archrivals Madrid.

Lamine Yamal, Ferran Torres and Marcus Rashford struck for Barcelona arsenic they earned a 3-1 triumph implicit Elche successful La Liga to bounce backmost from past weekend’s Clasico defeat and move back into 2nd spot to way leaders Real Madrid by 5 points.

Barca continued to conflict successful defence and Elche had chances to origin an upset connected Sunday, scoring done Rafa Mir, with the striker besides doubly hitting the woodwork.

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Hansi Flick’s Barca person failed to support a cleanable expanse successful six consecutive league games, successful the midst of an wounded crisis.

The champions were missing Pedri, Gavi, and Joan Garcia among others, but were capable to bring connected Robert Lewandowski and Dani Olmo pursuing spells retired of action.

Teenage prima Yamal underwhelmed successful past week’s decision by Real Madrid aft coming backmost from a groin issue, but looked much spritely against Elche.

Coached by Eder Sarabia, a erstwhile Barcelona adjunct manager nether Quique Setien, the ninth-placed visitors came to play and impressed.

Barca took the pb aft 9 minutes erstwhile Alejandro Balde drove guardant and fed Yamal successful the area.

The winger took a interaction to acceptable himself and past whipped a objective decorativeness past erstwhile Barca goalkeeper Inaki Pena, a teammate of his past season.

Three minutes aboriginal Torres doubled the hosts’ advantage, tapping location aft Fermin Lopez broke into abstraction down the near and provided an inch-perfect cross.

The striker revealed a t-shirt paying tribute to Valencia, his location region, a twelvemonth connected from the deadly flooding which deed Spain’s eastbound coast.

Lopez and Rashford fired narrowly off-target portion Pena saved from Torres arsenic Barca squandered immoderate presentable chances.

Mir pulled a extremity backmost soon earlier half-time. Barca tried to drawback the guardant offside but helium was successful his ain fractional erstwhile helium was played in. Mir bent a changeable past Ronald Araujo and Barca goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny and successful astatine the acold post.

Torres mightiness person scored again earlier the interval but Pena produced a superb prevention to extremity his onslaught to safety.

Early successful the 2nd fractional Mir clipped the apical of the crossbar with a curling effort arsenic Elche battled well.

Rashford sealed Barca’s triumph with a superb decorativeness aft Lopez picked him retired with a cross, for his 2nd league extremity of the campaign.

Veteran goalkeeper Szczesny pushed a Mir effort onto the station to prevention Barca sweating implicit their vantage successful the last stages.

“It was precise important to commencement beardown and intense. From there, we could instrumentality the crippled wherever we wanted it to go,” Torres told DAZN.

“We knew the benignant of crippled they were going to play and we started precise strong. We were a spot disconnected afterwards, but we recovered our tone and our strength again successful the 2nd half.”