Yamal, Raphinha on Target as Barcelona Rout Feyenoord 5-1

Lamine Yamal scored with a free kick through the defensive wall as Barcelona beat Feyenoord 5-1 win Wednesday in its Champions League opener.
Raphinha extended his prolific start to the season with a fast goal inside three minutes in the early kickoff at Camp Nou. The Brazil forward added his second and Barcelona’s third in the 57th.
Both Barcelona stars were outscored by Stuttgart forward Ermedin Demirović who got a hat trick inside 12 first-half minutes in a 3-1 win over Norwegian debutant Viking.
The high rate of goals through the first eight of 189 games in this Champions League campaign well above the average of 3.47 last season. That was the highest rate since the 1960s in the old European Cup format.
Two-time defending champion Paris Saint-Germain was among the heavyweights starting their campaign in the evening kickoffs. PSG was hosting Slovan Bratislava one day after 10 players in coach Luis Enrique’s squad were nominated on the shortlist of 30 for the Ballon d’Or award.
Arsenal, the beaten finalist in May, starts in Napoli after topping the 36-team standings last season with eight straight wins and as the only unbeaten club.
Six-time European champion Liverpool, under new Spanish coach Andoni Iraola, hosts Atletico Madrid in a repeat of the opening round one year ago that was won 3-2 on captain Virgil van Dijk’s stoppage-time header.
The six-game lineup also included Sporting Lisbon hosting Galatasaray.
Raphinha now has eight goals in just five games this season, as if sending a reminder to those who left his name off the Ballon d’Or nominations Tuesday.
Barcelona got high-class goals from all angles Tuesday, including from new signings Karim Adeyemi and Gabriel Jesus. Adeyemi found the top corner of Feyenoord’s net with a precise curling shot in the 22nd and Jesus came off the bench to glance in a header in the 85th.
Teenage star Yamal fired a free kick left-footed from 20 meters (yards) in the 77th that went between two Feyenoord players jumping and turning sideways in the wall.
Feyenoord is coached by Giovanni van Bronckhorst, who returned to Camp Nou where he spent four years as a player and won the Champions League in 2006.