{"id":10428,"date":"2022-09-18T20:13:09","date_gmt":"2022-09-18T20:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/?p=10428"},"modified":"2022-09-18T20:13:09","modified_gmt":"2022-09-18T20:13:09","slug":"barcelona-vs-elche-lewandowski-double-sends-catalans-top","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/?p=10428","title":{"rendered":"Barcelona Vs Elche: Lewandowski Double Sends Catalans Top"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Barcelona went top of LaLiga as a Memphis Depay strike and Robert Lewandowski\u2019s double saw them cruise to a 3-0 victory against 10-man Elche at Camp Nou.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Elche captain Gonzalo Verdu was sent off after just 14 minutes, before Lewandowski and Depay put Xavi\u2019s side 2-0 up at the break.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Lewandowski grabbed his second of the game after the interval to make it 11 goals in all competitions since his arrival from Bayern Munich as Barca eased to victory.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Victory continued Barca\u2019s unbeaten start to the domestic season as they moved top ahead of Sunday\u2019s Madrid derby.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Verdu was dismissed for cynically dragging down Lewandowski after Frenkie de Jong put the striker through on goal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Edgar Badia made numerous saves to keep the hosts out, but the Catalans eventually capitalised on their numerical advantage with 34 minutes gone when Lewandowski tapped in Alejandro Balde\u2019s cross.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Depay made it 2-0 soon after, lashing into the roof of the net after bamboozling John Donald with a brilliant turn.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Barca thought they were three up before the break when Pedri bundled in, but the midfielder was offside in the build-up.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Lewandowski scored his second just after half-time, rifling into the bottom-left corner after the ball fell to him in the box.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The Poland international nearly had his hat-trick when seeing a drive saved by the legs of Badia, before skimming the crossbar with another attempt.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But those misses mattered little as Barca eased to another win.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Barcelona went top of LaLiga as a Memphis Depay strike and Robert Lewandowski\u2019s double saw them cruise to a 3-0 victory against 10-man Elche at Camp Nou. Elche captain Gonzalo Verdu was sent off after just 14 minutes, before Lewandowski and Depay put Xavi\u2019s side 2-0 up at the break. Lewandowski grabbed his second of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10429,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5845,5847,5846],"class_list":["post-10428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-barcelona-vs-elche","tag-catalans","tag-lewandowski"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10428"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10430,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10428\/revisions\/10430"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}