03.06.2009 18:55
Barça goal feasts
Berta Brau
The 2008/09 season will go down in the record books for many reasons, one of them being the 17 goal routs totalling 83 goals that Barça has imposed on their hapless rivals.
This season, Barça has scored 158 goals in 62 matches, a huge total thanks mainly to the large
number of goal routs chalked up by Guardiola’s team. Although the manager did his best to
play down the frequency of these goal feasts, even he had to accept the evidence of the results
– Barça scored more than four goals in 17 different matches this season.
17 goal feasts
Whoever the opponent, whichever the competition, Barça’s
philosophy never changed – attack and score. This resulted in 17 goal feasts with more than
four goals – 11 in the league, 5 in the Champions League and one in the Cup.
83 goals in 17 matches
In these 17 matches, Barça scored 83 goals. That’s more than half their goals in just
over a quarter of the matches. That’s an average of 4.88 goals per match.
From Sporting to Real Madrid
The league, being the competition with the most matches,
witnessed 11 of the 17 goal feasts. The first was away to newly promoted Sporting (1-6). That was
the start of rich vein of goals that ended in the Santiago Bernabeu with the crushing 2-6 defeat of
Real Madrid. In between, team after team was put to the sword: Atlético Madrid, Almería, Malaga
(twice), Valladolid, Valencia, Deportivo, Numancia and Sevilla. In total, 56 goals in 11 matches.
Five European routs
Barça played 15 matches in Europe this season, including the qualifier
against Wisla, and scored four or more in five of them. Only Shakhtar Donetsk and Manchester United
resisted the pressure. The big scores were: Wisla (4-0), Bayern Munich (4-0), Basle (0-5), Sporting
Clube (2-5) and Olympique Lyon (4-0).
The Cup Final
Cup Finals are not usually high scoring so no one could predict the result of Barça’s
encounter with Athletic Bilbao in Valencia. Despite going behind, Barça hit back with four splendid
goals.