David Villa scored his first league goal for Barcelona, as the Spanish champions opened their La Liga campaign with a comfortable win at Racing Santander. Villa headed in Daniel Alves's fine cross just after the hour to add to earlier strikes by Lionel Messi and Andrés Iniesta.
After Zlatan Ibrahimovic joined Milan yesterday, Barcelona's attack has a new look to it, with the former Valencia striker, Villa, joining Iniesta and Messi. It took only four minutes for them to click, Messi gathering Iniesta's through pass and raced into the area before chipping the goalkeeper, Antonio Rodríguez. Iniesta later lobbed Rodríguez with a perfectly placed first-time shot in the 33rd minute.
Santander were offered a life lifeline two minutes later when Francisco Perez won a penalty, going down in the area under a light challenge by Maxwell. However, Victor Valdes stretched to his right to parry Mohamed Tchite's spot kick.
Villa thought he had his goal just before half-time, collecting a through ball and firing home, only to see the linesman's flag raised for offside. He would not be denied, however, as he headed in from Alves's centre to seal a fine start to the season for Barcelona.
"This team was already great and it has won everything, so what I wanted to do was settle in as soon as possible at the beginning," said Villa, who moved from Valencia this summer for a fee of €40m.
Elsewhere today, Pablo Osvaldo scored twice as Espanyol beat Getafe 3-1, Real Sociedad beat Villarreal 1-0, Deportivo La Coruña drew 0-0 with Zaragoza and Osasuna were held 0-0 by Almeria.
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