The week travelled well

Lamine Yamal needed two minutes at Wembley, scoring after an error by England's Marc Guéhi to put Spain on their way to a 3–2 Nations League win. Anthony Gordon, his Barça teammate, equalised for England on the counter, and Harry Kane's header had the hosts ahead at half-time. Kane later hit the bar with a penalty, Dani Olmo set up the Spain substitute Álex Baena's equaliser on the hour and Mikel Oyarzabal scored the winner. Pau Cubarsí and the Barça midfielder Rodri also started and Pedri came off the bench, so six Barça players took part, and Gordon was the only one on the losing side.

Six Barça players took part, and Gordon was the only one on the losing side.

Elsewhere, Raphinha played the full match in Townsville, in northern Australia, and took the corner that Rayan, a Brazil substitute, headed in for a stoppage-time equaliser against Australia. Karim Adeyemi set up Germany's goal in a 1–1 draw with the Netherlands. Jules Koundé played all 90 minutes of France's 1–0 win in Türkiye, and the Barça goalkeeper Dominik Livaković kept goal throughout Croatia's 2–1 win in Prague.

Barça's under-21 internationals had less to celebrate. Marc Bernal and Xavi Espart both started as Spain lost 2–1 in Finland. Jesse Bisiwu, an 18-year-old Barça winger, got five minutes on his Belgium U21 debut, and the Barça forward Hamza Abdelkarim played the last half-hour of Egypt's 0–0 draw with Angola. It has been a quick few weeks for Espart: his first Barça goal at Levante, then a Spain U21 debut less than a fortnight later.

Pere Romeu, the Femení's head coach, has AS Roma away in the Champions League and the Clásico against Real Madrid at Camp Nou in the next eight days. At Logroño United's Las Gaunas stadium he started a young side, with Marta Torrejón and Caroline Graham Hansen as the experienced heads. Graham Hansen's corner brought the first goal after 17 minutes, glanced in by Mayssa Baha. At 15 years and eight months, Baha is the youngest official scorer since the women's team became part of the club in 2002. It was a set-piece finish, and there is no need to build a forecast on it yet.

At 15 years and eight months, Baha is the youngest official scorer since the women's team became part of the club in 2002.

The young side also let Logroño into the game. The home team had a penalty appeal turned down before half-time, and after the break, with Patri Guijarro and Ewa Pajor already on, Logroño's Barquero went close and Morcillo hit the crossbar. Patri made it 2–0 with a chip from the edge of the area, and the Barça goalkeeper Gemma Font still had to make a late save to keep the clean sheet.

Aitana Bonmatí came on in the 78th minute. She had not played for Barça since the end of May, after breaking her fibula last November and then having trouble with her ankle. A dozen minutes at Logroño shows she is available again. How much she can play against Roma and Real Madrid, four days apart, is a separate question for Romeu and the medical staff.

Peña Sport came to the Estadi Johan Cruyff, Barça Atlètic's home ground in Sant Joan Despí, to sit in a back five and counter. For most of the first hour it worked. Juliano Belletti, Barça Atlètic's head coach, started his wingers, Aziz and Álex González, on their natural sides and switched them back after 20 minutes. The first goal came from the spot in the first half, when a foul in the area let the striker Ignasi Quer score his fifth league goal of the season. The midfielder Pedro Villar went off injured before half-time, and the team lost some rhythm after that.

Four clean sheets in four league games, with a squad this disrupted, is the best sign so far.

The winger Shane Kluivert and the Malian Ibrahim Diarra, who was playing for the first time this season, came on midway through the second half. Kluivert's corner found the defender Landry Farré's head for 2–0, and Kluivert then scored twice late on, once from outside the area and once at the end of a long run.

Jesse Bisiwu, Orian Goren, Mirza Catovic and Jordi Pesquer were all away with their national teams, and Arnau Blanco, a member of Hansi Flick's first-team coaching staff, was watching from the stand. Three wins and a draw have put Belletti's side provisionally top of their Segunda Federación group, in Spain's fourth tier, with Osasuna's reserve side still to play. Four clean sheets in four league games, with a squad this disrupted, is the best sign so far.

Going by the goal times, Barça have led for more than three-quarters of their regulation minutes in the league. They have trailed for about ten, all inside the first 25 minutes against Rayo Vallecano and Sevilla. Lamine Yamal scored after six minutes at Valencia, Xavi Espart after five at Levante and João Cancelo after eight against Racing de Santander, which left those opponents chasing the game almost from kick-off.

Early in a game, centre-backs have no single striker to pick up.

The front line has a lot to do with it. Robert Lewandowski and Ferran Torres left in the summer, and Flick has not rebuilt the attack around a fixed number 9. Raphinha plays through the middle by running in behind, Dani Olmo swaps with him and drops in to combine, and Fermín López attacks the space they leave. Early in a game, centre-backs have no single striker to pick up, and they are often still sorting out who takes whom when the first goal goes in.

The goals conceded are the weak spot. Levante scored twice in the last 12 minutes after Barça had gone three up, and Racing scored twice from avoidable mistakes after Barça had taken the lead. Only Rayo Vallecano and Sevilla have scored first. The mistakes tend to come from the same places: loose passes in the build-up and a team spread out by all that forward running. Better opponents won't wait for Barça to be three goals up before they punish them.

The General Assembly is where elected member delegates vote on the club's major decisions. On 19 September it ratified the Babylon Park agreement by 252 votes to 158, the closest result of the day. The licence runs for 25 years and covers an indoor Barça-themed family entertainment centre at Camp Nou, with plans for similar centres across Catalunya and possibly abroad.

He may be right, but members can't check a verbal answer.

Before the vote, Jaume Asens, a Member of the European Parliament for the left-wing Catalan party Catalunya en Comú, asked the club to withdraw the item or delay it until an independent human-rights audit had been done. He also asked it to publish the company's ownership, main investors, commercial relationships and risk assessment. In the same letter he wrote that Babylon Park is not among the companies examined individually in the June 2025 report by the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. The checks he wanted, he added, would not assume any wrongdoing. The chain behind the company was founded in Israel. That alone is not evidence of wrongdoing, and we are not suggesting otherwise.

At the Assembly, Ferran Olivé, the vice-president, told delegates that the club's compliance department had looked into the company's corporate links and found no incompatibilities. He may be right, but members can't check a verbal answer, and the club's announcement of the result says nothing about any review. Publishing what it looked at and found would be easy, and would give the 158 delegates who voted against more than the board's word.