Barcelona beat Elche 3-1 on Sunday night in La Liga thanks to goals from Lamine Yamal, Ferran Torres and Marcus Rashford.
The win sees Barcelona return to winning ways and cut the gap at the top of the table back to five points after 11 games of the 2025-26 season played.
Although Barcelona won, a rather surprising statistic emerged after the victory. Eder Sarabia’s side actually edged possession in the game, enjoying 51% of the ball to Barca’s 49%.
Football data and statistics expert Fran Martinez
noted how it’s the first time Barca haven’t enjoyed the majority of possession in a home game in La Liga since October 2017 against Las Palmas under Ernesto Valverde (Barcelona 3-0 Las Palmas 48% to 52%).
Opta also say that Elche are the first newly promoted team to have more possession in a La Liga game against Barcelona for 20 years.
While Barcelona will welcome the three points, they still look a little short of form and continue to be without some key players including Pedri, Raphinha and Joan Garcia.
Ferran Torres admitted it had been a mixed showing after the final whistle. He said: “We started very strong. We were a bit off our game after that, but we found our spirit and our intensity.”
