Iran Press/ Europe: Following impressive wins against Valencia and Napoli, this week’s amazing form continued with a third consecutive four-goal display. The game will be most remembered for a sublime performance by Pedri, but it was a tremendous showing by the whole team, who are just getting better and better under the expert guidance of Xavi Hernández.
Barça ended the game in utter control, but it did take some time coming. With a crunch Copa del Rey semi-final coming up this week, Athletic opted to rest a few key players for this one. But if anybody expected that to make Barça’s job easy, they’d soon be thinking again.
The home side may have created by far the largest share of the danger, with Gavi coming closest to scoring, but after 37 minutes, they hadn’t managed to turn any of that into goals. And the Basques were here to party too and threatened several times on the counter.
It was then that Barça finally managed to break the deadlock. Gerard Piqué, who’d already had one chance cleared off the line, headed a corner onto the crossbar, and Aubameyang was there to catch the rebound.
The Gabonese striker’s fifth goal in three games was especially impressive as he was falling backward when he struck the ball, but into the net, it went, and Barça were finally on top.
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