Yamal scores as Barcelona win at Elche to extend La Liga lead

Teenage prima Lamine Yamal opens the scoring aft six minutes to acceptable the instauration for a convincing Barcelona victory.

Lamine ‌Yamal scored 1 extremity and created different arsenic Barcelona extended their pb astatine the ‍top of La Liga with a 3-1 triumph implicit Elche connected Saturday.

Barcelona moved to 55 points from 22 matches, 4 up of Real Madrid, who person a crippled successful hand. Elche remained successful 12th spot with 24 points from 22 games.

Recommended Stories

• list 1 of 3Real look to bounce backmost from UCL woes arsenic Vallecano get successful La Liga
• list 2 of 3UFC 325: Volkanovski dominates Lopes, defends featherweight title
• list 3 of 3Milan protests decry ‘creeping fascism’ of ICE relation astatine Winter Olympics

Yamal opened the scoring for the visitors ⁠before Alvaro Rodriguez equalised for Elche successful an end-to-end archetypal half.

Ferran Torres and Marcus Rashford struck ​to implicit the win, sparing the blushes of wasteful Barca, who had 30 efforts ‍on extremity successful the match.

“We got 3 much points. We proceed to turn arsenic a team. We haven’t reached our highest yet,” Barcelona midfielder Frenkie de Jong said.

“We usually person radical who decorativeness well. There are times ‍when they fail. ⁠The important happening is that we person them [chances].”

Yamal scores the opening extremity against Elche [Jose Breton/AP Photo]

Yamal sets the tone

Barcelona took the pb wrong six minutes erstwhile Dani Olmo played Yamal done connected goal, and the 18-year-old rounded goalkeeper Inaki Pena to people his 13th extremity of the play successful each competitions.

Olmo struck a changeable against the crossbar midway done the archetypal half, and wrong a minute, Elche were level.

German Valera slipped erstwhile Real Madrid guardant Rodriguez successful down the Barcelona defence, and helium raced wide to score.

The visitors should person retaken the pb erstwhile Torres struck ‌the crossbar again from six yards retired with a mediocre miss. The shot rebounded to him, and helium past steered it against the station successful a comical series of play.

Torres got his extremity successful 40 minutes erstwhile de Jong recovered abstraction successful the container and, alternatively than sprout himself, laid the shot backmost for the guardant to occurrence into the extortion ‌of the nett from 15 yards.

It should person been 3-1 ⁠minutes aboriginal erstwhile Fermin Lopez someway skied the shot implicit the crossbar from six yards with the extremity gaping.

Barcelona continued to make chances successful the 2nd half, with substitute Rashford blameworthy of a mediocre miss erstwhile helium enactment his changeable wide ‌with conscionable the goalkeeper to beat.

Rashford got his extremity successful 72 minutes, however, erstwhile Yamal’s debased transverse was not cleared by the Elche defence, allowing the England guardant to blast the shot ‍into the extortion of the nett from adjacent range.

“Barca onslaught precise well,” Rodriguez said. “They person precise bully players, and it wasn’t to be. We volition proceed moving to bash better.”