Laliga Leader Barcelona coast past Cadiz to extend their winning streak to seven games and create pressure from the reigning Champion Real Madrid.
Barca’s Sergi Roberto and Robert Lewandowski struck in the first half to give the league leader an early 2-0 home advantage and a win over the lower ranked Cadiz to continue their hot streak in pursuit for their 27th Spanish league title. They are now unbeaten in the last 18 matches across all competitions. The Barcelona side tops the current La Liga table with 59 points, an eight points clear of the second placer Real Madrid and a 16 points difference over Real Sociedad. Follow for accurate La Liga Prediction here!
Cadiz remains in the relegation zone and has so far won as few as five of their 22 league games this season – in 17th place with 22 points. Xavi Hernandez made a lot of changes throughout the match, six to be precise, especially in his starting lineup. Despite those changes, his side shows no signs of slowing down. “Scoring twice before the break gave us a comfortable lead that practically sealed the win for us going into the second half,” Barca Coach Xavi Hernandez said in an interview.
“We had a good solid first half and I’m satisfied, although we eased off after the break. Maybe the team got a little tired but we are happy because we kept our eight-point lead at the top of the standings,” he added.
Preview
Heading into this match. Barcelona have only dropped one game of their 14 LaLiga home matches against Cadiz (W11 D2) throughout their meetings in the competition, that defeat came in Cadiz’s most recent league visit to Camp Nou (0-1) last April 2022. Meeting Cadiz at their home turf, in Camp Nou would equal their best winning streak under the guidance of Xavi Hernandez in the competition. Meanwhile, Cadiz boss Sergio prepared his team by making some changes in his starting lineup to aim for their sixth win of the season.
1st Half
The first 45 minutes of the match is quite tight as the lowly Cadiz started their campaign against top-flight Barcelona with a tight defense throughout the first forty minutes – pressuring the league-leaders to commit turnovers after turnovers that lead to Ferran Torres to be the first player received a yellow card in this match. But in the 43rd minute, Roberto netted a close-range goal from the rebound of a header by Polish International Robert Lewandowski to lift the home side with momentum. Then, the Polish striker doubled the lead in the extended time at the 45th minute to register his only goal and the winning goal for the Barcelona side.
2nd Half
The Polish striker almost scored his second goal of the match at the 57th minute, but his shot hit the crossbar. However, the challenger side had the chance in this final half with Ramos almost hit the back of the net and Arzamendia had a stooping header but Ter Stegen performed pretty well as he provided outstanding defenses, saves, and blocks to keep the 2-0 Barcelona advantage intact until the buzzer sounds.
Review
Barcelona successfully kept their clean sheets to 17 in La Liga this season, the most by a team after their first 22 games of the season. The Polish International Robert Lewandowski had registered his 15th goal in his first 19 La Liga appearances, he became the second fastest player to reach that statistics in the tournament.
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