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| Suárez, Messi and Iniesta celebrate vs Espanyol |
It was a beautiful night of football at the Camp Nou, one of the best you’ll see as FC Barcelona comfortably saw off City rivals Espanyol 4-1 in the Catalán derby to end their 2016 league campaign with a win, reducing the deficit to Real Madrid to three points into the new year.
Striker Luis Suárez netted twice with Jordi Alba and Lionel Messi grabbing the other goals as Barça gave Espanyol an unpleasant gift for Christmas, with David López goal not enough for anything. Irrespective of the scoreline and aside from the three scorers, two top performers were Neymar and Andrés Iniesta who both were 10/10 in the full 90 minutes.
Barça started the game quite well, pressing Espanyol from the first minute and Messi was the first to draw blood as he came close to opening the scoring on 7 minutes but his shot wasn’t on target after good play by Suárez and Neymar.
Barça got the opener 10 minutes later though, Mascherano did well to win the ball at the back which met Iniesta before the midfielder unleashed a crazy long ball to find Suárez who kept his cool to control with a perfect first touch and then fire past Diego López.
Lionel Messi had another shot wide around 30 minutes before setting up Suárez with a great throughball but his shot was saved by Diego López. Barça missed a number of half chances but finally got the second on 67 minutes and it was all Messi-Iniesta. The midfielder did well to find Messi who had limited space on the right, but the little magician ruthlessly sliced through Espanyol’s defence with a couple of unreal footworks dribbling past the entire defence before shooting, the goalkeeper Roberto (who had already replaced the injured López) saved but Suárez fired in the rebound.
A minute later, Messi was at it again, dribbling past the entire Espanyol defence and finding Jordi Alba who made it 3-0. David López pulled one back for the visitors after good work from Pablo Piatti and Gerard Moreno but it was Messi who sealed the game as he scored the goal of the game on 90 minutes.
A fine one-two with Suárez set Messi up on the left who coolly kicked the ball through the legs of Roberto to make it 4-1, giving Barça all 3 points and sending them back to second position above Sevilla and just 3 points behind Real Madrid who have a game in hand.