Brilliant Barcelona hammer Bayern as Raphinha nets stunning hat-trick
There are always high hopes for the meeting of two European giants and it quickly became apparent that this encounter wouldn’t disappoint.
Inside the opening minute, Raphinha latched onto Fermín López’s through ball and showed brilliant composure to round the scrambling Manuel Neuer and slide his shot into the gaping net.
With Bayern looking for a response, Harry Kane was halted by Iñaki Peña after breaking behind and was then denied by an offside call when he headed home from Thomas Müller’s cross in the 10th minute.
Bayern and their talismanic goalscorer remained undeterred by those setbacks and equalised eight minutes later, with Kane applying a clinical finish to Serge Gnabry’s cross.
The Blaugrana then came agonisingly close twice, as Robert Lewandowski fired wide before Lamine Yamal blocking Neuer’s pass resulted in the ball bouncing past the post.
While the goalkeeper’s lapse went unpunished, Kim Min-jae’s didn’t as Fermín got behind the centre-back and reached the ball ahead of Neuer, dinking it to Lewandowski for the frontman to apply a first-time finish.
Raphinha then ended the first half as clinically as he had started, receiving Marc Casadó’s sensational pass and glided forward before firing through Dayot Upamecano’s legs.
Kim dispossessed Lewandowski to save Neuer’s blushes following a poor pass early in the second period.
There was no stopping Raphinha, though, as Barça’s captain chested down Lamine Yamal’s superb pass before racing forward and sending a pinpoint strike into the bottom corner to complete his hat-trick.
Vincent Kompany responded with a quadruple change on the hour mark but Kingsley Coman struck harmlessly wide after cutting in. There were already shouts of “Olé” from the stands with over 20 minutes remaining as the Blaugrana toyed with such highly revered opposition.
While Lewandowski couldn’t add to Barcelona’s tally late on, the hosts certainly enjoyed themselves on the way to recording back-to-back UCL wins to jump up the standings.
In contrast, Bayern have now lost three away European matches in a row for the first time, and have lost back-to-back UCL matches having not been defeated in any of their previous 41 matches at this stage of the competition.