Ten stats from the 5-1 win against Viktoria Plzen

Ten stats from the 5-1 win against Viktoria Plzen

Games like the one on Wednesday always throw up plenty of trivia, and we've picked out the best

The Champions League returned to Spotify Camp Nou in style with a 5-1 defeat of Viktoria Plzen. The game was flowing with juicy nuggets of trivia and here are ten of the best:

Off to another fine start

Barça have only ever lost once in their opening group stage game since the UEFA Champions League adopted the new format. Last night's was the 18th win, while there have been five draws and just one defeat. That was the 3-0 defeat at home to Bayern Munich last season. 

Lewandowski on fire

Robert Lewandowski is the highest goalscorer in the competition in the last three years. Following his sixth hat-trick in the Champions League the Polish striker has amassed an astonishing 36 goals in his last 27 games, and is third in the all-time list with 89.

Kessie and Torres open accounts

Frank Kessie and Ferran Torres both played their first Champions League games for Barça last night, and they both celebrated with goals. The Ivorian headed in after just 13 minutes and the Valencian needed just two minutes after coming on as a substitute to lay on an assist for Lewandowski. Four minutes later he scored himself by converting a fine pass from Ousmane Dembélé

Debut night

Gerard Piqué was another of the substitutes, thus getting his first playing time of the new season. And another was new signing Pablo Torre, who is officially a Barça Atlètic player but came on for the last few minutes and looked very impressive indeed in his first experience of senior football at FC Barcelona. 

Dembélé the danger-maker

Ousmane Demélé is proving to be one of the key players in Xavi's Barça, and last night he set up no fewer than five goalscoring opportunities, two of which resulted in goals.

Kounde the setter-upper

Jules Kounde has only played two first team games, but he's already got three assists to his name. Despite being a defender, he laid up two against Sevilla at the weekend, and here he was doing it again, using his height to flick the ball into Franck Kessie's head. 

Near zero waste

Lewandowski had four attempts on goal against the Czechs. That's fairly standard, but the astonishing thing is that all but one of them ended up with the ball in the net. He just looked so accomplished, so sure, and makes the art of scoring goals look so simple!

7th Barça hat-trick

Lewandowski joins a very select group of players who have scored three goals in the same Champions League fixture: Lionel Messi, Arda Turan, Neymar, Eto'o, Ronaldinho and Rivaldo.

Lewy celebration Plzen

Christensen the pass master

Andreas Christensen was also making his Champions League for the team and was involved in more actions than any other player on the pitch. And his 96.5% completed passes rate shows that he was doing good things with those interventions. Gavi and Gerard Piqué both had 100% pass rates, although they were on the field for a much shorter amount of time.

Ansu Fati start

Ansu Fati was in the starting XI for the first time since he came back from injury. He hadn't started a game since January 20 against Athletic in the Copa del Rey. He's played plenty of football since recovering his fitness, but until now only as a second half substitute.

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Força Barça

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