Barça are one of the eight quarter-finalists in the Champions League, and they got there in style. Hansi Flick’s side arrived at the Spotify Camp Nou on Wednesday with the tie level thanks to a penalty converted in the final moments in Newcastle, but they produced a sensational performance to settle things on home soil. After a chaotic first half, with a 3–2 scoreline at the break, the culers delivered an outstanding second 45 minutes, scoring four more goals for a final result of 7–2. That’s a scoreline for the history books.
Third time in the Champions League
Those seven goals against the English side mark only the third time in Barça’s history in Europe’s top competition that they have reached such a tally. Previously, a 7–1 win over Bayer Leverkusen and a 7–0 victory against Celtic stood as the team’s biggest wins. The major difference this time was the team’s shared scoring effort.
Five different scorers
Against Newcastle, five different players found the net (Lewandowski, Raphinha, Bernal, Fermín and Lamine Yamal), whereas in the Leverkusen match Messi scored five of the goals, with the other two from Tello, and against Celtic the scorers were Messi (3), Suárez (2), Neymar and Iniesta.
Since Flick took over the Barça bench, this is also the third time the team has scored seven goals, following a 7–0 win over Valladolid and a 7–1 victory against Valencia. It is also the fourth time with five different scorers, something very few teams are capable of achieving.
First 7-2 since 1993
To find the last match with the same scoreline, we have to go back more than three decades, to February 1993, when Johan Cruyff’s Barça thrashed Sporting Gijón. Three years earlier, in 1990, was the last time it happened in European competition, in the Cup Winners’ Cup, against Turkey’s Trabzonspor.
A spectacle against Newcastle enjoyed by 56,662 spectators (the highest attendance since the Mallorca match on 28 May 2023), the final game at the old Spotify Camp Nou, when 88,775 fans bid farewell to their home. Now they have returned to enjoy nights like this.