Barcelona made it eight wins from eight in La Liga on Saturday night with a 3-0 victory over Getafe at Camp Nou. Time to check out how the players fared…
Defence
Joan Garcia – 7
Not much to say here, he had literally nothing to do all game except a couple clean-ups as a sweeper-keeper which he did well.
Xavi Espart – 7
I’d give him higher if he was playing as a midfielder but he just isn’t a full-back and there’s not much point shoving him there – he just keeps drifting into midfield positions. His passing is brilliant,
his defensive positioning is not.
Gerard Martin – 6.5
Didn’t do much of anything, fairly quiet, unbothered game except coordinating some passing sequences. He kept Getafe offside a couple times which was good
Eric Garcia – 8
He actually had to earn his keep, did well to make a few good recovery runs and his timing on the offside trap was impeccable, plus a nice through ball to assist the Gordon opener.
Jules Kounde – 8.5
A monumental performance, this is the Kounde of 22/23 and 24/25 that we were missing. Ran his socks off, lined up the offside trap perfectly, had an unspoken coordination with Yamal and capped it all off with a nice goal. One difficult missed tap-in was the only slight blemish on an otherwise superb game for the Frenchman.
Midfield
Rodri – 8
Showed why he was the MVP at the World Cup, covered enough ground by himself to make the defence redundant and bossed his area physically and technically. Still feels unreal that he’s in blaugrana.
Gavi – 6
Looked understandably rusty, grew into the game but wasn’t quite himself for most of the game- hopefully he shakes it off and gets back to his bulldog best.
Dani Olmo – 7
Mixed performance from him: spectacular positioning, good passing, extremely poor finishing. He should really have had one if not two goals to his name
Attack
Anthony Gordon – 9
Scored his first for Barca (though somewhat fortunate that it went in the way it did), almost got another assist with a gorgeous cross to Olmo and ran his defender ragged. That wasn’t even the best part of his game, he is deceptively fast and presses like no tomorrow.
Gabriel Jesus – 6.5
Feels harsh giving him just a 6.5 after that lovely goal but he was so ineffective otherwise. He missed shots, kept drifting out to the wing, was barely involved in the build-up and didn’t really press much at all.
Lamine Yamal – 7.5
Good game, nice assist to Kounde and active as per usual but none of his trademark flair really showed up- still good though
Substitutes and manager
Fermin Lopez – 7
Similar to Yamal in most ways – active but ineffective, ran well and pressed but didn’t really achieve much.
Pedri – 8
The Wizard is back- superb control, nice passing and never made the wrong pass.
Marc Bernal – 6.5
Not quite Rodri-esque, but not bad at all.
Karim Adeyemi – 7
Not much to be said except it wasn’t much of a drop in level when he replaced Gordon.
Hamza Abdelkarim – N/A
Glad to see him get a chance but he only had 10 minutes and just the one difficult chance. No reflection on his ability.
Hansi Flick – 7.5
Picked the starting lineup superbly, rested many key stars and still fielded a team good enough to beat Getafe comfortably. My only criticism is that Yamal should maybe have been given some rest and Hamza should have been brought on immediately after our third goal.
Random Observations
- This game settled that Rodri-Pedri-Fermin needs to be our midfield for the big games.
- Eric at center-back and Kounde at right-back works wonders, far better than playing them the other way round. If they keep playing like this, they both lock themselves into the ‘Gala XI’ alongside Cubarsi and Espart/Cancelo
- There’s no one quite like Raphinha, is there?
- Glad Joan Garcia doesn’t smoke because Szczesny would have gotten through a large pack of cigarettes in the amount of free time our goalkeeper had today.
