Barcelona extend their lead at the top of the league to seven points with late comeback at home.
LaLiga leaders Barcelona have fought back from 3-1 down to beat Celta Vigo 4-3 in a roller-coaster encounter as a stoppage-time penalty by Raphinha extends their lead over Real Madrid at the top of the table to seven points.
With the score tied at 3-3 after Celta’s Borja Iglesias netted a hat-trick, Saturday’s game in Barcelona seemed to be heading for a draw when Dani Olmo won a penalty deep into added time and Raphinha stepped up to score and seal the three points.
The result puts the pressure back on Real Madrid, who play fourth-placed Athletic Bilbao on Sunday. Celta Vigo are seventh with 43 points.
“This is football. We wanted to win this game, but we weren’t always at our best,” Barca substitute and goal scorer Dani Olmo told DAZN. “But the team came through in the end, and the crowd pushed us on right to the finish.
“It’s three points towards our objective, but we have to keep going.”
Barcelona took the lead when Ferran Torres picked up the ball in midfield and found space to dribble towards goal, pulling the trigger from the edge of the box to beat goalkeeper Vicente Guaita for his 10th league goal of the season.
But Celta responded immediately when Pablo Duran put in a superb cross from the wing, and as Wojciech Szczesny sprinted off his line to collect the ball, the Polish keeper missed it to give Iglesias a tap-in into an empty net.
Barca fell behind seven minutes into the second half when Frenkie de Jong made an error and completely missed a long ball, allowing Iglesias to run through and beat Szczesny to grab his second goal.
Iglesias hat-trick for Celta Vigo
As Barca pushed forward to find an equaliser, a Celta clearance found Iglesias again, and he capitalised on the home side’s high line to sprint through on goal and beat Szczesny for a third time to claim his hat-trick.
A stunned Barcelona tried to recover quickly, and they got one back in the 64th minute when Robert Lewandowski and Raphinha combined to find Olmo, who scored five minutes after coming on as a substitute.
“He [coach Hansi Flick] told me we needed to play a little more calmer. We just needed to connect with each other better,” Olmo said about what Flick told him before he went onto the pitch.
Four minutes later, Barcelona levelled it at 3-3 when Lamine Yamal crossed the ball into the 5.5-metre (6-yard) box, where Raphinha rose above the defence to head home.
A shell-shocked Celta looked to leave with a point, but Olmo earned a penalty when he was fouled in the box and the referee had no doubts when he pointed to the spot after a VAR check.
Raphinha then stepped up and blasted the ball into the top corner in the 98th minute for his 30th goal in all competitions this season.
“It’s a bittersweet feeling because we did a lot of things right,” Celta’s Pablo Duran said. “They’ve got such a high level, especially in the final third. They’re capable of these things.
“We should be very proud of ourselves, coming here and showing a lot of character, playing our football. For a lot of the game, we were better than them, but we go away with a bad feeling because of the result.”
