Barcelona achieved a decisive 3-1 win away at Granada in round 25 of La Liga action on Saturday. Ivan Rakitic, Luis Suarez and Lionel Messi scored for the club, who enjoyed 70 percent of possession, created 16 goal-scoring chances and attempted 16 shots, nine of them on target.

Luis Enrique introduced several changes to his preferred 11, including players who have enjoyed less and less playing time as the season has developed. The Catalans' level of intensity and fluency when on the ball dropped...

"It all happened so quick," Sergio Busquets says. He started the 2008-09 season at the municipal stadium in Santa Eulalia (capacity: 1,500). He ended it at the Estadio Olimpico in Rome (capacity: 70,600). From Spain's regionalised third division, with 350 teams spread over 17 groups, to the Champions League final in nine months. A European champion aged just 20, a year later he was a world champion with Spain.

Even the pitches had small in tercera, let alone the stands, now here he was on the...

Sergio Busquets put his signature to an improved contract extension on Friday that will keep him at Barcelona until 2019, and that is good news for a club that wants to return to winning trophies after drawing an unusual blank last season. Busquets proved again on Tuesday at Manchester City that he is a player for the big occasion; he will likely be involved again at Granada on Saturday as Barca attempt to return to winning ways in La Liga after last week's shock home defeat to Malaga.

Still...

Barcelona's valuable 2-1 away against Manchester City was proof that they have what it takes to go all the way in this season's Champions League if fully focused on the task in hand. Reassuringly, the Blaugranas looked like a completely different team from the one that struggled to break Malaga's back-line and walked away with a deserved 1-0 home defeat in their last La Liga game.

While the return of Javier Mascherano and Ivan Rakitic to Luis Enrique's starting 11 brought back much-needed muscle,...