Barcelona Crushes Getafe, Piles Pressure on Real Madrid

Barcelona beat Getafe, 4-0, on Tuesday. We'll get to the rest of the details, but let's start by talking about the 28th minute.

Getafe won a corner and played it into the box. The ball got partially cleared and dropped to Ruben Perez outside the area. Perez hit the ball on the volley and sent it whizzing just past the post as Victor Valdes looked on helplessly.

Did you catch that? Alright, now you know all you need to about Getafe's performance during their visit to the Nou Camp.

It's rare that a 4-0 scoreline can be said to flatter the defeated, but Getafe should consider themselves very flattered indeed.

Barcelona started the onslaught early when Lionel Messi dropped a ball smoothly off his chest into the path of Alexis Sanchez in the 13th minute. Sanchez took two touches toward the center of the field and curled a shot around the keeper from 20 yards out.

1-0 Barcelona.

Getafe narrowly avoided going even further behind just three minutes later as Pedro Rodriguez pounced on a casual touch.

Sanchez took the ball over and drove at the frantic defense. Pedro received his square ball at the top of the area and smashed his shot goalward. But Miguel Moya got a hand to it and pushed it around the post.

Just moments later, Messi cut the Getafe defense open with a piercing ball to Xavi Hernandez. Xavi chipped Moya and turned to celebrate, but Daniel Diaz managed to clear the ball off the line.

Whether he cleared it just before or just after it crossed is debatable, but in the end, it wouldn't matter.

Messi wasted a nicely lofted ball over the top from Sergio Busquets in the 25th minute. The Argentinian controlled on his thigh before trying the spectacular volley as he ran in between defenders. The ball sliced wide, and Getafe were off the hook again.

One minute before the half, Messi would balance his account. He played a ball to Andres Iniesta near the top of the area. Iniesta took a sublime backward touch to leave the ball as Messi ran in behind. One touch to escape a sliding challenge and a second to rocket the ball into goal, and Messi had his 39th league goal of the season.

2-0 Barcelona.

Pep Guardiola's squad took their foot off the accelerator for long stretches of the second half. The match was so completely under control that the home fans could barely raise their voices to protest a dubious challenge on Andres Iniesta in the area as the match entered the last half hour.

But the home side turned it back on as the end neared. Alexis got his second goal of the match by overpowering a static defender to head home Isaac Cuenca's cross in the 73rd.

3-0 Barcelona.

Perhaps the goal of the match and maybe of Pedro's career came just two minutes later off a Messi free kick out of the right corner. Pedro crashed the front side and jumped to flick a header blindly behind him. The ball tucked itself neatly inside the back post to complete the rout.

4-0 Barcelona.

At the final whistle, the statistics showed Barcelona with 73 percent of possession. If anything, the number felt low. More damning from a Getafe standpoint is that the visitors didn't manage a single shot on goal for the entire match.

With an extra game played, the win moves Barcelona within one point of Real Madrid at the top of the table. It also piles extra pressure on Jose Mourinho's men ahead of Wednesday's Madrid derby against Atletico.

Barcelona and Real Madrid will play the second El Clasico of the season on April 21 at the Nou Camp.