Barcelona equal 1968-69 record but Eric García injury clouds PSG and Madrid week

Barcelona beat Real Betis 5-2 at La Cartuja on 17 October, a ninth successive LaLiga win that equals the best start to a Spanish top-flight season, set by Real Madrid in 1968-69. The scoreline suggests control. The evening itself was more awkward than that, and it ended with Eric García rubbing his thigh on the bench ahead of medical tests, in the same week Hansi Flick takes his side to Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League and then faces Real Madrid in the league.

Lamine Yamal opened the scoring on 10 minutes and later set up Gabriel Jesus for Barcelona's third. Valentín Gómez levelled for Betis on 27, and Rodri restored the lead on 41 with his first goal for the club. Betis went into the match third in the table and, for a while, played like it.

The raw numbers describe a one-sided contest: 69 per cent possession for Barcelona, 18 shots to six, 10 on target to five, and an expected-goals count of 3.04 against 0.98. Barcelona scored five from that 3.04, a finishing overperformance of 1.96 in this match, against an average of 0.0 across their earlier 2026/27 fixtures in all competitions. That is one match, not a trend, but it is the kind of number that separates a comfortable win from a repeatable one.

Betis, meanwhile, scored twice from 0.98 xG and five shots on target. Abde Ezzalzouli made it 3-2 on 53 minutes, and moments later Facundo Bernal was sent off for tangling with Yamal. Eric García, on at half-time for Gerard Martín, scored on 62. Dani Olmo added the fifth on 81.

Reports describe a fiery game against ten men. The shot count says Barcelona were already creating plenty before the red card. Whether the second-half increase in chance creation came from Flick's substitutions or from Betis going a man down is a question the next two matches will not answer directly, but it is the right one to ask of a team that has now won nine in a row.

Eric García's afternoon is the part that matters beyond the table. He came on at the interval, scored, then pulled up with what appeared to be a muscular complaint and was taken off by Flick. He was later seen rubbing his thigh on the bench. No diagnosis or recovery timeline has been confirmed, and it would be wrong to assume one. What is clear is that a player Flick had used to manage the load on others is now himself a doubt, in the week that decides how this season is remembered.

Flick had been preparing to rotate against Betis with PSG and Real Madrid in mind. The result keeps Barcelona's momentum and their place in the record books. It also thins the options available for the two fixtures that will test whether a perfect LaLiga start means anything in Europe or against the champions' closest domestic rival.

Barcelona's summer business — Rodri, Dominik Livaković, Gabriel Jesus, Karim Adeyemi, João Cancelo and Jesse Bisiwu in, with Marc Casadó, Tomás Marqués, Guille Fernández, Dro Fernández, Álvaro Cortés and Ronald Araujo out — was meant to give Flick a deeper squad for exactly this kind of week. The Betis win showed the depth scoring goals. It also showed how quickly that depth can be tested.

Nine wins from nine is a historic achievement, and it should be described as one. The question now is whether the squad can carry it through Paris and Madrid without the record becoming the story of a season that peaked in October.