Barcelona closed to within a point of La Liga leaders Real Madrid after a 3-1 win at home to champions Atletico Madrid yesterday.

Barca took the lead in the 12th minute when Lionel Messi’s trickery opened up the Atletico defence and the ball fell to Neymar to stab home.

Messi created a second for the home side on 35 minutes when he released Luis Suarez who stroked the ball past Miguel Angel Moya.

Atletico hauled themselves back into the match when Jesus Gamez went down under a challenge from Messi in the penalty area in the 56th minute. Mario Mandzukic blasted his spot-kick past Claudio Bravo.

The Catalans made the game safe three minutes from time when Messi took advantage of a lucky deflection to fire in from close range.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.