Barcelona did not so much conquer as accumulate. On a Thursday night under the lights of the Spotify Camp Nou, the champions edged past Athletic Club with the composure of a side that already knows what it is about, two goals in either half sealing a 2-0 win that keeps their season immaculate. Two games, two victories, seven goals scored and not one conceded. This is authority made routine.

Raphinha opened it in the 37th minute, Fermin Lopez closed it in the 82nd, and in between Barcelona controlled the tempo like men strolling through familiar rooms. There was no flood of goals, no frantic passage of play, simply the steady application of quality against opponents who arrived carrying the weight of two straight defeats. By full time the scoreboard read exactly as the balance of play demanded.

For Athletic Club, this was a night to file away and forget. Bottom of La Liga on nil points, five goals conceded already, the visitors were undone not by any single collapse but by a slow suffocation. They found no way through, no way back, and no answer to a Barcelona side that has begun the campaign with the swagger of a team unwilling to drop a single point it does not have to.

Pedri pulls the strings

The breakthrough carried Pedri's fingerprints all over it. In the 37th minute the midfielder threaded a through ball of exquisite weight, splitting the Athletic Club defence and inviting Raphinha to run onto it inside the six-yard box. The Brazilian did not need a second touch to think about it. Left foot, low, steered into the centre of the goal, and the Camp Nou had the lead its patience deserved.

It was a goal built on the kind of understanding that cannot be coached in a fortnight. Pedri's vision, Raphinha's timing, the pass and the finish arriving as one clean movement. Athletic Club had defended stubbornly for half an hour, but one moment of genuine class was all it took to prise them open. Once behind, they never truly threatened to draw level.

That single strike changed the texture of the evening. Barcelona, freed from any anxiety, could settle into their rhythm and let the game come to them. The home crowd sensed there would be no scare, only the wait for a second goal to make the points certain.

Fermin seals it

That second goal duly arrived with eight minutes left. Fermin Lopez, alert to the loose ball inside the area, swept a right-footed finish from very close range into the bottom-left corner. It was a poacher's reward, the kind of goal that arrives when a team keeps pressing long after the result feels settled, and it drained whatever faint hope Athletic Club still clung to.

There was something telling about the timing. Rather than ease off with the lead in hand, Barcelona kept probing, kept asking questions, and Fermin's strike was the answer to that persistence. A one-goal cushion became a two-goal statement, and the margin flattered nobody. The visitors had been second best throughout, and the final quarter merely confirmed it.

For Fermin, it was a moment of quiet significance, the sort of contribution that lengthens a manager's list of options and deepens a squad already brimming with attacking threat. Barcelona's forward line looks to have more than enough to go around, and on this evidence the goals will come from every corner of it.

Table takes shape

Two matches into the new La Liga season, Barcelona sit top of the pile on six points, the only club with a maximum return and a defence yet to be breached. Seven scored, none conceded, and a look of ruthless efficiency about everything they do. Early days, certainly, but the champions have made the sort of start that stakes an immediate claim on the summit and dares the chasing pack to keep pace.

For Athletic Club the picture is bleak by comparison. Twentieth in the table, no points on the board, and five goals shipped across two outings. A single goal scored is scant comfort for a side that will have expected far more, and the numbers tell of a team searching for its footing at the worst possible moment. Bottom is bottom, however early the calendar reads.

The gulf between the two clubs on the night was not always visible in flurries of chances, but it was there in the control, the certainty, the sense that Barcelona always held the game in their grasp. Athletic Club will need to rediscover their edge quickly before the early deficit hardens into something harder to shift.

Eyes ahead

Barcelona will travel onward with belief coursing through them, the platform of two clean-sheet wins offering the surest possible foundation for a title defence. Perfect returns rarely last a whole season, but the manner of these opening performances suggests a squad both settled and hungry. The challenge now is to sustain the standard when the fixtures grow more demanding and the pressure begins to build.

Athletic Club, meanwhile, face the more urgent task of arresting a slide before it gathers real momentum. Zero from six is not a crisis in late August, but two defeats and five goals conceded demand a response. Confidence must be rebuilt, the defence tightened, and a first point of the campaign claimed sooner rather than later.

On this night, though, the story belonged entirely to the hosts. Raphinha and Fermin Lopez supplied the goals, Pedri supplied the invention, and Barcelona supplied a reminder of exactly why they begin this season as the team to beat. The Camp Nou emptied content, its champions still perfect, still top, and still yet to concede a single goal.