European leaders with 12 different goalscorers
In football, roles are usually quite clearly defined. Goalkeepers stop goals, defenders guard the area, midfielders create chances and forwards convert them. Of course, all of those duties cross over to a certain extent, and that is the hallmark of a good team. One very obvious statistical method to demonstrate that is the number of different players that score goals. And this season's FC Barcelona does that to perfection.
Top in Europe's five biggest leagues
In what have traditionally been regarded as the five biggest leagues in Europe (England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France), only one of the 96 teams can boast 12 different goalscorers thus far. And that's Barça, who have scored a total of 21 goals in nine games.
Next up is the other Catalan club, Girona, with 11, followed by Brighton, Newcastle and Monaco with 10. Curiously, two of the players on those teams are loanees from Barça (Eric Garcia at Girona and Ansu Fati with Brighton).
Lewandowski leads the way
Robert Lewandowski is once again Barça's top scorer with five, but the in-form Ferran Torres has found the net three times, Raphinha has two, and João Félix and Lamine Yamal have both scored once.
Five midfielders
That's the forwards, but Barça also score plenty of goals from midfield. Pedri did so against Cádiz, Gavi and Frenkie de Jong against Villarreal, young Fermín López got his first goal against Mallorca and it was Sergi Roberto who claimed the equaliser in Granada.
Two defenders and one own goal
From the defence (where we could also include Sergi Roberto), João Cancelo has already scored twice in La Liga, namely what was named Liga Goal of the Month against Betis and the winner against Celta. And Jules Koundé scored a fabulous header against Osasuna. There was actually a thirteenth goalscorer, and a improbable one in Sergio Ramos, who scored an own goal while playing for Sevilla.
There are others to come. Araujo and Christensen both scored last season and will most probably do so again, while new signing Gündoğan is no stranger to scoring goals but has yet to bag his first in a blaugrana shirt. It would take a brave person to bet against that happening very, very soon!