Barcelona swept to early-season silverware as a 3-0 Nou Camp victory over Sevilla secured the Spanish Super Cup title for Luis Enrique’s team.
The hosts were ruthless in the second leg of the curtain-raising clash of last year’s double winners and the Copa del Rey runners-up.
Arda Turan fired Barcelona into a 10th-minute lead and doubled his haul in the early moments of the second half, before Lionel Messi headed a third as Barcelona sealed a 5-0 aggregate win.
Messi, typically, made Barcelona tick throughout and proudly lifted the trophy.
It was his prompting that cued up Arda for the opening goal, the newly blond Argentinian exchanging passes with new recruit Andre Gomes before feeding in the telling pass.
Arda, on the shoulder of his marker, pulled away and drove a left-footed shot across goal and into the right corner.
Sevilla had posed an early threat before the breakthrough strike, with Claudio Bravo saving from Wissam Ben Yedder.
But trailing 2-0 from the first leg, Jorge Sampaoli’s players needed to take their chances.
Barcelona had the comfort of being able to spurn chances, such as when Messi rather inexplicably cracked a shot off target when he looked all set to stretch the home side’s commanding lead.
Sevilla were wasteful again after Samuel Umtiti’s handball gave them a penalty, with Bravo saving from Vicente Iborra.
They were out of luck, too, being denied an equaliser on the stroke of half-time when Gabriel Mercado’s stooping header from a difficult angle bounced away off the top of the crossbar.
Barcelona 3-0 Sevilla FT: Shots (OT) 12(4)-11(5), Possession 65%-35%, Tackles 12-16, Rating 7.25-6.11 https://t.co/SU2u7f6htf #supercopa
— WhoScored.com (@WhoScored) August 17, 2016
Arda made it 4-0 on aggregate when he swept home just 54 seconds after the break, seizing on a loose ball 25 yards from goal and whipping the ball over Sergio Rico, possibly with the aid of a slight deflection.
He squandered a hat-trick chance soon afterwards when chipping over the bar, but by then Barcelona were cruising towards their title.
Messi got the goal he deserved in the 55th minute when Munir’s cross from the left somehow found the diminutive Argentinian amid a forest of players, and his header back across goal, at full stretch, bounced into the far corner.
Sevilla were outclassed, but fatigue was also perhaps a factor. The Andalusian side played extra-time in the European Super Cup defeat to Real Madrid last week and were playing their second game against Barcelona in the space of four days.
It was a stroll down easy street for Barcelona after the fifth goal of the tie, or perhaps simply target practice, with Messi driving a free-kick into the Sevilla wall and curling another shot just wide.
