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Barcelona smashes Girona to set club-record league unbeaten run

LLUIS GENE / AFP / Getty

The last time Barcelona lost a La Liga match, Philippe Coutinho was pulling the strings at Liverpool and Ousmane Dembele was terrorising Bundesliga full-backs with Borussia Dortmund.

On Saturday, the two big-money additions started alongside Luis Suarez and Lionel Messi for the first time, and the end result set a club-record 32-match unbeaten league run.

An April defeat at Malaga seems like an eternity ago as the Catalan behemoth widened its lead atop the table to 10 points on Atletico Madrid courtesy of a resounding 6-1 win over Girona at the Camp Nou.

After bombarding Girona 'keeper Bono in the opening stages, the top-flight debutant stunned the host when Portu scored in the third minute. Wishful thinking for the minnow 100 kilometres outside of the Catalan capital when Luis Suarez levelled moments later.

Messi then bagged a six-minute brace before Suarez scored again to make it 4-1 at the interval. Coutinho deftly deposited a curling peach of a goal in the back of Girona's net 11 minutes after the break and Suarez completed his hat-trick with a third of the half to play.

Barcelona is now six matches short of Real Sociedad's league-record unbeaten run that included the final six games of the 1978-79 season before extending the run to its first 32 games of the 1979-80 campaign.

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