Lamine Yamal has scored a brace in three of Barcelona’s first five games, and the last man to do that was Messi
Barcelona were three up at Levante and hanging on at 3-2 with two minutes left before Karim Adeyemi settled it. Five wins from five, and three points clear of Real Madrid.
Sep 14, 2026
Lionel Messi scored a brace in three of Barcelona’s first five La Liga games in 2012. Nobody had matched it since. Lamine Yamal did it on Sunday at the Ciutat de Valencia, and Barcelona are still the only side in Spain with a perfect record.
The 4-2 win at Levante took them to 15 points from five matches and three clear of Real Madrid at the top. It also took them about twenty minutes of genuine discomfort to get there.
Three up and cruising, then not
Xavi Espart opened the scoring in the fifth minute with an angled drive past Mathew Ryan. Yamal doubled it on 19 after a run and cut-back from Raphinha, then won and converted a penalty three minutes after half time. Three goals, forty-eight minutes, and the game looked finished.
It was not. Ivan Romero came off the bench and pulled one back in the 79th minute after Barcelona gave the ball away in their own area. Roger Brugue made it 3-2 with two minutes of normal time left. Levante had a shot cleared off the line before that and another deflected over. For a quarter of an hour the champions were defending like a side that had stopped concentrating in the 50th minute.
Karim Adeyemi settled it in stoppage time, running at the defence from halfway, cutting inside and hitting it hard enough that the goalkeeper never moved. He cost 22 million euros from Borussia Dortmund with seven more in add-ons, signed to 2031, and he scored on his debut at Elche on 23 August too. Hansi Flick gave Adeyemi his Germany debut back when he managed the national side, then on Sunday sent him on with the lead down to one. “It was a bit late, but we have the three points,” Adeyemi said afterwards.
Two 19-year-olds off the same production line
Espart is 19 years and 115 days old. He joined La Masia in 2015, made six first-team appearances last season in the number 42 shirt, won the Under-19 European Championship with Spain in the summer, and started this season as Flick’s first-choice left-back. Sunday was his first competitive goal for the club. Only Pau Cubarsi has scored younger as a Barcelona defender this century.
He also gave Levante their opening goal back, which is roughly the deal you make with a teenage full-back. Yamal is the same age and has six league goals in five matches, more than a third of his total from the whole of last season.
Levante marked the World Cup win by honouring Barcelona’s Spain players before kick-off. Then they spent 90 minutes trying to take the game off them, and for a while looked like doing it. They stay 13th on five points.
The gap is real, the defending is not
Real Madrid have 12 points from five after beating Rayo Vallecano 4-1 on Saturday, so this is not a title race anybody is running away with yet. Five matches in, Barcelona have taken all 15 points on offer and then given up two goals in a quarter of an hour to a side in the bottom half, which is the sort of afternoon that wins you a league and loses you a Champions League tie.
Flick will not mind the three points. He will mind how the back line played once the game was won. Levante had a shot off the line, a deflection over the bar and two goals inside eleven minutes, and better sides than Levante are coming.