La Liga, Round 6: Real Madrid, Barcelona both win

Barcelona recovered from a listless scoreless draw during the midweek with a thorough 6-0 thumping of Granada at the Camp Nou. Neymar led the way for the Blaugrana with a hat-trick, as Jose Enrique’s side refund the creative spark that they’d been lacking in their last couple games ... that or Granda is just really poor. Either way, it’s a solid victory for Barca as their defense remained unsecured upon so far this season.

Granada came out strong and nearly grabbed the lead in the 7th minute. Dmitri Foulquier made a great fun down the left wing but Jérémy Mathieu was able to block his shot. The rebound went right to Youssef El Arabi who somehow managed to curl a shot around defenders that skipped off the crossbar.

What’s really hurting Barca at this point is probably fatigue, thanks to an extremely busy schedule with Champions League and La Liga play colliding over the past week and a half. Despite Enrique’s best efforts to rotate his roster and keep his players fresh, there legs have to be wearing down a bit. It will be interesting to see if the first year head coach decides to risk another poor result in league play on Saturday with Paris Saint-Germain looming next week.

Key Player: Pedro (Barcelona)

Real Madrid started the La Liga season a bit slowly, but they’ve quickly turned things around over the past few games as their offense has begun pouring in goals like a broken water main flooding a street. Led by the amazing Cristiano Ronaldo and his two straight hat-tricks (including a four-goal game against Elche), Madrid are quickly becoming every bit of the unstoppable force we expected to see.

Carlo Ancelotti finally giving Asier Illarramendi a chance in the defensive midfield has helped settle down Madrid’s issues there, allowing the attack to worry even less about paying attention to their defensive responsibilities than usual.