The first two goals of his loan spell suggest that England forward’s stay at Barcelona could become more than a marriage of convenience
It was the day that Uefa confirmed, as kick-off approached in Barcelona’s Champions League season, that La Liga’s champions would begin their home campaign in the competition against Paris Saint-Germain next month where they ended the last one, at the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys. With their supporters getting ready to renew their journey up the slopes of Montjuic that few of them care for, their climb to potential glory mirrors the hopes of one of their new arrivals.
And how he has arrived. Flags do not get planted at the summit much more emphatically than this, and Marcus Rashford could not have picked his moment better to announce himself with Barcelona. His first two goals for the club, setting them on the road towards a trophy this team is determined to make theirs on a night back in his homeland, with the vacuum of the transcendent but injured Lamine Yamal waiting to be filled, didn’t so much state an intent to become important for Hansi Flick’s side as yell it from the top of the Cheviots.
Before this the tale of the Rashford tape in Spain had been of gentle progress, of promise, such as his first assist for the team at the weekend on his home debut (and what a strange home debut it was, staged at the 6,000-capacity Estadi Johan Cruyff with Camp Nou yet to get the safety sign-off to partially reopen), a 6-0 demolition of Valencia in which he intermittently looked bright before the bigger boys, the rotated Raphinha and Robert Lewandowski, entered stage left to finish the discussion as night drew in.
