Barcelona fall short of huge goalscoring record after Espanyol win | OneFootball

Hansi Flick has made Barcelona fun again.

The incoming German coach has led the club to 11 wins from 12 league games while also overseeing four-goal bursts against Bayern Munich in the Champions League and at Real Madrid's Santiago Bernabeu.

Sunday's 3-1 stroll in the Catalan derby over Espanyol took the club's scoring tally to a swollen 40 in La Liga already. Only once before in the 95-year history of the division has Barcelona ever scored more goals over the opening 12 games of a league season, per Opta.

Barcelona didn't score their 40th goal of the 2023/24 La Liga season until their 20th game of the campaign. One week later, Xavi Hernandez announced his decision to step down that summer, describing the torment of working for Barcelona as "unpleasant" and "cruel".

Within a matter of months, Flick has overseen a remarkable transformation in atmosphere off the pitch which has translated to a thrilling style of front-foot football on the grass. "It's incredible: he has changed the dressing room radically," Lamine Yamal gushed after Barcelona's 4-0 evisceration of Real Madrid last month.

"You see it in the way we play, how we enjoy it on the pitch. We have a lot of respect for him and he has not had to shout or anything, it's earned naturally. He's an amazing coach."

Yamal's quality was evident during Xavi's reign, but he has moved to another level of performance entirely this season. The 17-year-old is one of four Barcelona players with at least five league goals to their name this season. No other team in Europe's top five leagues can boast such a long roll-call of repeat goalscorers, per Opta.

Barcelona's leading La Liga goalscorers - 2024/25

Raphinha (left), Lamine Yamal (centre) and Robert Lewandowski have all been in fine form this season / SOPA Images/GettyImages

This prolific vintage of Barcelona are just the third team in the 21st century to have scored at least 40 goals in 12 La Liga games. Only Real Madrid - who achieved the feat twice, in 2011/12 and 2014/15 - can match such a prolific start.

Surprisingly, none of the Barcelona sides which included Lionel Messi were ever as prolific as the current outfit. In fact, you have to wind the tape back to 1950/51 for the only Barcelona team to have scored more goals (42) as this stage of the campaign.

That historic side boasted the mighty Laszlo Kubala - who would later score seven goals in a single league game - but were sat sixth in the table when they enjoyed their early season burst. That year, four other clubs scored at least 40 goals over the opening 12 weeks of the campaign, likely a consequence of the division's expansion from 14 teams to 16 over the summer, somewhat obscuring Barcelona's feat. There are no qualifying factors to diminish this season's impressive start.