Barca punished Real Zaragoza last night at the Camp Nou with a 4-0 thrashing with goals from Piqué, Messi, Puyol and Villa.
It was a comfortable win for Barcelona as Zaragoza didn’t offer too much resistance and it showed when piqué was allowed a free header on 18 minutes into the game. Just before half time Messi squeezed one in and made it 2-0.
After the break, it was pretty much the same although to be fait to the visitors, Zaragoza did muster up a brief spell of pressure early on but any hopes of a comeback were quickly laid to rest after a scrappy goal by Carles Puyol put the home side 3-0 up with 54 minutes on the clock.
David Villa came on to add a fourth goal and was promptly mobbed by his team-mates as it looked liked he had found his scoring touch again.
Barcelona exercised total control throughout the game, dominating possession and restricting Real Zaragoza to the occasional fruitless counter-attack. Barca goalie Victor Valdes had a boring evening and all he had to do was pull out the odd cross which happened to appear in his skyline.
As far as goals were concerned, that was just about it and the win put Barcelona on top spot briefly on goal difference. Later on at 22:00, Mestalla saw visitors Real Madrid steal 3 points from a gritty Valencia who were not in the mood for losing. Goals came from Karim Benzema, Sergio Ramos and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Valencia lost 2-3 but put on a brave display of football with 11 yellow cards being shown, 7 of which went to Real Madrid. There was also the disputed handball in the box by Higuain but watching it from every angle, the ball thudded against the Real Madrid striker who was on the floor at the time and the referee promptly said “no”.
So that was it, everything remains the same as the two topa teams earned another well deserved 3 points apiece.
