Barcelona Beat Real Betis 5-2 in Seville to Make It Nine La Liga Wins From Nine

SEVILLE, SPAIN · SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2026

For about an hour at La Cartuja on Saturday, Real Betis gave the best team in Spain a genuine fright. Then the hour turned, a red card came out, and Barcelona did what Barcelona have done in every single game this season: they won. The final score was 5-2 to the visitors in La Liga's Matchday 9, a seventh goal arriving nine minutes from time to settle a match that had contained seven goals, two more disallowed, a spectacular volley wiped off by VAR and a sending-off — and it made Hansi Flick's side nine wins from nine in the league, eleven from eleven in all competitions.

The bare facts are agreed everywhere the match was recorded. Reuters closes the book at 5-2, with Lamine Yamal opening the scoring before Rodri, Gabriel Jesus, Eric Garcia and substitute Dani Olmo joined him on the scoresheet, and Valentin Gomez and Ez Abde replying for Betis. FC Barcelona's official match report tells the same story in the same order, and TSN's report matches it goal for goal, down to Facundo Bernal's red card moments after Betis had pulled the score back to 3-2. When three separate accounts line up this cleanly, what is left to argue about is only how it felt — and by every account, it felt chaotic.

Yamal lit the fuse

It took ten minutes. Yamal collected the ball outside the area, feinted, set himself and curled a finish into the top corner with the kind of casual precision that has stopped looking surprising and started looking routine. FC Barcelona's report describes a player who seemed almost to decide, on the spot, that now might be a good time to score. TSN clocked the shot at 20 yards and noted it was the teenager's eighth league goal of the season. Reuters, more drily, said Yamal lit the fuse. All three are right. Betis, who came into the match third in the table and enjoying one of the best starts in their history, had planned for a difficult evening; what they had not planned for was conceding a goal of that quality before their plan had even settled.

To their credit, Manuel Pellegrini's side refused to fold. Betis began finding ways through a Barcelona defence that has looked mortal whenever the press in front of it disconnects, and in the 27th minute Valentin Gomez rose to meet a Pablo Fornals delivery and headed the equaliser. The game opened up completely. Alvaro Valles produced a superb save to deny Karim Adeyemi at one end; Joan Garcia had to be alert to keep out former Barcelona man Hector Bellerin at the other. It was end to end, loud, and entirely unlike the controlled procession Barcelona's perfect record might suggest.

A header, a volley, and a handball

Barcelona went back in front four minutes before half-time, and the goal carried a small piece of history with it. Rodri headed home from a corner — his first goal in Barcelona colours, as both FC Barcelona and TSN recorded — capitalising on hesitation from Valles, who had been Betis's hero minutes earlier. Two minutes later came the moment La Cartuja will argue about all week. Giovani Lo Celso spun and volleyed a spectacular effort into the top corner, the stadium erupted, and then VAR intervened: a handball by Cucho Hernandez earlier in the move, spotted on review, and the goal was gone. Betis went in at the break 2-1 down, furious, and entitled to be. A match that could have been level at half-time instead asked them to chase a side that does not often get caught.

Two minutes that decided it

The second half barely paused for breath. Gabriel Jesus thought he had made it 3-1, volleying in a Yamal pass, only for an offside flag to wipe it off — FC Barcelona's report counts it as one of the game's two disallowed goals. Moments later the same combination produced one that counted: Fermin Lopez released Yamal down the right, the low cutback left Gabriel Jesus with the simplest of finishes, and in the 51st minute Barcelona finally had their cushion. It lasted two minutes. Abde Ezzalzouli, another former Barcelona player, raced clear and finished clinically across Joan Garcia to make it 3-2, and La Cartuja believed again.

Belief lasted about sixty seconds. The goal sparked a melee involving several players, Yamal ended up on the ground after an incident with Facundo Bernal, and the Betis midfielder was shown a straight red card. Reuters reported that Bernal was sent off for headbutting Yamal; TSN described him moving his head towards the winger in the confrontation, with Yamal booked for his own part in it. Either way, Betis were down to ten men with more than half an hour to play against the most ruthless attack in the league. The contest, as a contest, ended there. What followed was an exercise in Barcelona managing a lead with the ball, in the rain, while home supporters began drifting towards the exits.

Closing it out

The fourth goal arrived in the 62nd minute, and it was scrappy in a way the first had not been. Yamal's free-kick struck the wall and looped towards the far post, where Pau Cubarsi beat Valles to the ball and popped it across for Eric Garcia to finish from close range. Garcia's evening ended early — he departed with a fitness concern that FC Barcelona said they hoped was not serious — but there was better news on the other side of the ledger: Raphinha returned from his short injury absence, Flick easing him back in off the bench in place of Yamal. In the 81st minute Dani Olmo, another substitute, collected the ball on the edge of the area and drove home the fifth. Five goals, five different scorers, and a bench that contributed the last of them: this is what depth looks like when it is working.

What it means

Start with the record, because the record is the story. Nine wins from nine equals the best start to a La Liga season ever made, matching the Real Madrid side of 1968-69 — a mark both FC Barcelona and TSN flagged at the final whistle — and Reuters puts the leaders on 27 points, five clear of second-placed Atletico Madrid, who won 1-0 at Espanyol earlier on Saturday. Reuters also counts 39 league goals in those nine games. Betis, third on 19 points according to Reuters, saw a seven-match unbeaten run end, per Oddsivio's fixture record, but they lost to the champions in a game they twice threatened to turn, and nobody else in Spain is beating this Barcelona side either.

The week ahead explains why Flick will care as much about the manner as the margin. Barcelona travel to face Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League on Tuesday, and next weekend brings El Clasico, where a tenth straight league win would take the 1968-69 record outright. Betis, meanwhile, turn back to Europe with a home game against Feyenoord in midweek, carrying the knowledge that for an hour in Seville they went toe to toe with a perfect team — and the irritation that one red card, one handball and one teenager's left foot made sure an hour was all it was.