Sevilla score first and make it awkward for 45 minutes. Then Raphinha scores a perfect hat-trick and Barça make it 21 points from 21.
The numbers
| Barcelona | Sevilla | |
|---|---|---|
| Possession | 70% | 30% |
| Shots | 24 | 7 |
| On target | 7 | 3 |
| xG | 3.47 | 0.4 |
| Corners | 3 | 1 |
| Pass accuracy | 90% | 73% |
Result the chances deserved: Barcelona win 92%, draw 6%, Sevilla win 2% (Poisson model on each side's xG).
Starting line-ups
Barcelona (4-2-3-1): Livaković, Eric García, Cubarsí, Christensen, Cancelo, Rodri, Pedri, Yamal, Fermín, Gordon, Raphinha.
Sevilla (4-2-3-1): Vlachodimos, Iglesias, Sangante, López, Suazo, Kochorashvili, Agoumé, Sierra, Fofana, Correia, Ure.
Sevilla subs: Ejuke (59', Correia), Carmona & Isaac Romero (68', Sangante & Kochorashvili), Guridi & Alfon González (79', Sierra & Fofana).
Line-ups, minutes and xG: FotMob. Possession: FotMob 70%, 101 Great Goals 69%. Shots on target, corners and pass accuracy: 101 Great Goals. Livaković started ahead of Szczęsny; Flick called it a one-off decision.
Key moments, move by move
- Correia gets the ball wide on Sevilla's left and runs at Eric García.
- He gets away from García and crosses to the near post.
- Fofana gets in front of his marker and heads it in.
- Christensen plays a through ball from the back into Raphinha's run.
- Raphinha takes it in the box and shifts his weight to get away from his marker.
- He finishes low past Vlachodimos. Barça are level three minutes after going behind.
- Yamal wins the ball back high up the pitch on the right.
- He chips a cross into the box.
- Raphinha gets between the centre-backs and heads it past Vlachodimos.
- Yamal gets the ball between the lines.
- He slides Raphinha through behind the Sevilla defence.
- Vlachodimos comes out and Raphinha chips it over him.
Win it back high, finish fast: how Barça took over after half-time
- Sevilla's plan worked for a while. They were physical and direct and ran at Barça in transition. That made Barça defend on the break more than usual (The Football Xtra), and the opener came from exactly that side: Correia got past Eric García and crossed for Fofana.
- Flick's own verdict: the first half was below their level, and "we also gave away the ball too easily." Sevilla had only 0.40 xG all night, but for 20 minutes the space behind Barça's high line was a real threat.
- The second half: keep it, and when you lose it, win it back high. Barça ended with 70% possession and 24 shots. The goal that put them ahead came from Yamal winning the ball back high up the pitch and chipping a cross for Raphinha's header (Football España). The animation reconstructs that pattern; positions are approximate.
- Raphinha as the number 9. Starting centrally, he's harder for centre-backs to track than a fixed striker (The Football Xtra). He scored with his right foot, his head and his left, the first Barça player in 11 years to score a perfect LaLiga hat-trick (AllFootball). He now has 12 league goals in seven games.
What the analysts said
“It was a difficult game, especially in the first half. We also gave away the ball too easily.”Hansi Flick (Kuwait Times)
“You can't always win by five goals. The best thing we did was recover from what we did in the first half.”Hansi Flick (Goal)
“There's no better captain than Raphinha. He is the best captain we could have.”Hansi Flick (beIN Sports / FotMob)
“Sometimes it's not only about analysing everything. Sometimes it's also about the feeling.”Hansi Flick on starting Livaković (Yahoo Sports)
“He's very good and can adapt to any position up front. We give him the balls and he scores.”Fermín López on Raphinha (Kuwait Times)
“We knew we were facing a tremendous opponent, one of the teams playing the best football in the world.”Gabriel Suazo, Sevilla captain (Kuwait Times)
3.47 xG to 0.40, yet Flick was right to be unhappy with the first half.
On the numbers it was a thrashing: 3.47 xG to 0.40, 24 shots to 7, 70% of the ball. But Sevilla's one clear chance came in the 19th minute and they scored it. For most of the first half Barça were the team being made to run. Flick said so himself: they gave the ball away too easily, and Sevilla's direct play kept turning those losses into attacks.
What changed after the break wasn't the system. Barça kept the ball better, and when they lost it they won it back higher up the pitch. The go-ahead goal came from exactly that: Yamal won it back on the right, chipped a cross, and Raphinha headed in. From then on Sevilla couldn't get out, and Yamal's through ball for the third goal came against a defence that was already retreating.
The Raphinha experiment is now hard to argue with. He has 12 league goals in seven games, back-to-back hat-tricks, and has scored with his right foot, his head and his left in a single game. Moving him inside from the wing has given Flick a striker who presses from the front and still arrives in the box like a winger.