Lamine Yamal hits huge landmark as Barcelona close on all-time scoring record | OneFootball

"Atletico are a fantastic team. They defend well," Barcelona manager Hansi Flick admitted after travelling to Madrid on Sunday night. "But my team today was the better team."

Barcelona didn't look better than Atletico Madrid for much of this weekend's league meeting, falling 2-0 down to their tightly contested title rivals and growing increasingly frustrated with the mass of red and white stripes camped on the edge of their own box. Less than 20 minutes were remaining when the Catalans belatedly began a forward surge.

Robert Lewandowski halved the deficit six minutes before Ferran Torres headed Barcelona level. The score was still 2-2 as the match ticked into stoppage time when Yamal shifted the ball onto his left foot and sent a deflected shot arcing beyond the helpless Jan Oblak.

The signature change of direction which left Conor Gallagher scrambling on the Metropolitano turf was the 101st time this season Yamal has successfully dribbled past an opponent, per WhoScored. No other player across Europe's top five leagues has cracked triple digits, with Manchester City's Jeremy Doku a distant second at 88.

Lamine Yamal is the only player in Europe to have attempted more than 200 take-ons this season / Flor Tan Jun/GettyImages

Torres added a fourth against Atletico to emphatically seal three points which takes Barcelona to La Liga's summit. The Catalan giants now boast 132 goals in just 43 games across all competitions. If Flick's side advance to the final of the Copa del Rey and Champions League, they will have a maximum of 18 matches remaining - should they continue to average more than three goals a game, they will finish the campaign with a sickening total of 187.

The all-time record for most club goals in a single season is already held by Barcelona, when a team under the stewardship of Pep Guardiola in 2011/12 racked up 190 goals. Lionel Messi accounted for 73 of that haul.

Yamal's free-flowing iteration of Barcelona may not quite surpass their prolific predecessors, but they could record a more memorable campaign. The 2011/12 goal-gobblers finished second to Real Madrid in La Liga and were dumped out of the Champions League semi-finals by Chelsea.

This year's Barcelona are still in the race to win a European treble, sitting top of La Liga, Champions League favourites and into the Copa del Rey semi-finals. Flick's side are up against Atletico Madrid again in the final four of Spain's domestic cup with the aggregate score level at 4-4 after a typically chaotic first leg. It remains to be seen whether Barcelona will be the better team in that tie, but goals are all but guaranteed.