La Liga: top three powerhouses remain and Levante climb fourth

Barcelona’s excellent La Liga start that season was stretched out with a 3-1 win against Real Zaragoza at Camp Nou on Saturday night. Barca’s mascot, Lionel Messi, opened the score on 16th minute, Montañés cancelled it out less than in ten minutes but shortly after that Alex Song retained Barcelona the lead, netting his first goal since his arrival to the club. At one-hour mark Messi scored a third so Barcelona recorded their 11th win out of 12 matches of this La Liga campaign.

The Blaugrana’s closest neighbor in the table is Atletico Madrid, who are placed three points far from them after 1-0 victory over Ciudad de Murcia. Turkish midfielder Arda Turan scored on the 61th minute thus securing three points.

Real Madrid earned an impressive 5-1 victory at the expense of Athletic Bilbao. Jon Aurtenetxe Borde’s mistake turned out in an own goal, then followed goals from Sergio Ramos and Karim Benzema, at a half-hour mark and in two minutes. An answer from Ibai Gómez on the 42nd minute made it 3-1 and two second-half goals from Mesut Özil and Sami Khedira raised the score to 5-1. Real stay eight points behind the leading Barcelona as before.

Valencia secured a narrow 2-1 win against Espanyol via Roberto Soldado’s 89th-minute penalty while Deportivo de La Coruña suffered a 0-2 loss at Levante UD. So Levante stay fourth with 20 points after six wins, four losses and two draws.

Celta de Vigo ended a 1-1 draw against RCD Mallorca. Park Chu-Young cancelled out Tomer Hemed’s 22-minute opener on the 56th minute thus both sides earned a point.

Getafe overcame Valladolid 2-1 while Osasuna and Malaga ended in a scoreless draw.

One more high-scoring match of the weekend was between Sevilla and Betis, 5-1. Rubén Castro’s 66-minute strike was mere consolation because by that time Sevilla had already scored four and Ivan Rakitic added one more.