Lamine Yamal scored with a free kick through the defensive wall as Barcelona beat Feyenoord 5-1 win Wednesday in its Champions League opener.
Raphinha extended his prolific start to the season with a fast goal inside three minutes in the early kickoff at Camp Nou. The Brazil forward added his second and Barcelona's third in the 57th.
Both Barcelona stars were outscored by Stuttgart forward Ermedin Demirović who got a hat trick inside 12 first-half minutes
in a 3-1 win over Norwegian debutant Viking.
The high rate of goals through the first eight of 189 games in this Champions League campaign well above the average of 3.47 last season. That was the highest rate since the 1960s in the old European Cup format.
Two-time defending champion Paris Saint-Germain was among the heavyweights starting their campaign in the evening kickoffs. PSG was hosting Slovan Bratislava one day after 10 players in coach Luis Enrique’s squad were nominated on the shortlist of 30 for the Ballon d’Or award.
Arsenal, the beaten finalist in May, starts in Napoli after topping the 36-team standings last season with eight straight wins and as the only unbeaten club.
Six-time European champion Liverpool, under new Spanish coach Andoni Iraola, hosts Atletico Madrid in a repeat of the opening round one year ago that was won 3-2 on captain Virgil van Dijk’s stoppage-time header.
The six-game lineup also included Sporting Lisbon hosting Galatasaray.
Raphinha now has eight goals in just five games this season, as if sending a reminder to those who left his name off the Ballon d'Or nominations Tuesday.
Barcelona got high-class goals from all angles Tuesday, including from new signings Karim Adeyemi and Gabriel Jesus. Adeyemi found the top corner of Feyenoord's net with a precise curling shot in the 22nd and Jesus came off the bench to glance in a header in the 85th.
Teenage star Yamal fired a free kick left-footed from 20 meters (yards) in the 77th that went between two Feyenoord players jumping and turning sideways in the wall.
Feyenoord is coached by Giovanni van Bronckhorst, who returned to Camp Nou where he spent four years as a player and won the Champions League in 2006.
PSG arrives at the Champions League, after failing to win any of its first three games in Ligue 1, hosting a Slovakian champion which lost all eight games when the 36-team league format debuted two years ago.
Still, Luis Enrique typically has his team peaking in the second half of the season where titles are won and lost.
In back-to-back Champions League title seasons, PSG placed just 11th and 15th in the 36-team standings and had to go through the knockout playoffs round in February.
PSG also has eight players who were involved in the longest-ever World Cup until the final weekend in mid-July and had a shorter offseason break.
Slovan coach Yaya Touré will make Champions League history as the first African to lead a team into the main phase of the competition.
Atletico coach Diego Simeone is approaching 15 years at the club and starts his 14th straight season in the Champions League. His team was the beaten finalist — both times against Real Madrid — in his first and third tries to win the European title that still eludes the club.
Atletico has lost its last two visits to Anfield, though a 3-2 extra-time win there in March 2020 eliminated then-title holder Liverpool in the round of 16.
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