A Lamine Yamal penalty ensured Barcelona saw off a stubborn Celta Vigo side on Wednesday night to stretch their lead over Real Madrid at the top of La Liga to nine points. However, the 1-0 victory at Spotify Camp Nou came at a cost, as the wonderkid winger was forced off injured straight after converting the winner from the spot in the first half.<\/p>\n
Predictably, it was Yamal who was the catalyst for Barcelona. Having already twice come within inches of scoring, the teenager’s slaloming run drew a crude bodycheck in the penalty area shortly before half-time, and the 18-year-old dusted himself off to coolly convert the resulting spot-kick somewhat against the run of play. But rather than celebrate he immediately went down injured and was taken off.<\/p>\n
That goal – which preceded a lengthy pause due to a medical emergency in the crowd – didn’t open the floodgates, as Barca were made to grind out the result against their Europe-chasing visitors. They did have the ball in the net shortly after the break, but Ferran Torres’ fine finish was ruled out for offside after a VAR check.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, though, Hansi Flick’s men were able to get over the line, crucially extending their lead at the top of La Liga to a surely insurmountable nine points with just six games to play in their bid to retain the title.<\/p>\n
GOAL rates Barcelona’s players from Spotify Camp Nou…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Lamine Yamal penalty ensured Barcelona saw off a stubborn Celta Vigo side on Wednesday night to stretch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[92,6379,829,418,85,417],"class_list":{"0":"post-10116","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-barcelona","8":"tag-barcelona","9":"tag-barcelona-vs-celta-vigo","10":"tag-celta-vigo","11":"tag-features","12":"tag-laliga","13":"tag-player-ratings"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}