MADRID: Barcelona earned a hard-fought 1-0 win against Athletic Bilbao on Tuesday to put the pressure back on Real Madrid in La Liga.

Ivan Rakitic’s second-half winner moved Barcelona back in front of Real ahead of the rivals home match against relegation-threatened Mallorca.

Rakitic broke the deadlock in the 71st minute to leave Barcelona three points in front of Real, who can retake the lead with a win because they have better tiebreakers.

“We can’t worry about our rivals, just about us,” Barca coach Quique Setien said. “We needed to win, and now we wait to see what happens in their match.”

Rakitic scored less than 10 minutes after coming off the bench, firing a right-foot shot into the corner after an assist by Lionel Messi.

“It was an important win in a very difficult match,” Rakitic said. “It took a while for us to get into the match. They did well by not giving us a lot of space.”

It was Rakitic’s first goal for Barcelona since March 2019.

“It took 31 rounds for me to finally score my first goal of the season,” he said. I was mad at myself that it took so long.”

Messi, who turns 33 on Wedn­esday, again wasn’t able to score his milestone 700th career goal for club and country. He came close twice with shots that just missed the target late in the second half.

Barcelona were coming off a 0-0 draw at Sevilla, a result that allowed Real to take over the lead for the first time since the league resumed after the pandemic break.

Athletic, who have won only one of their four matches after the break, dropped to 10th place.

Earlier, Atletico Madrid continued their surge towards Champions League qualification by winning 1-0 at Levante to climb to third, thanks to an early own goal by Bruno Gonzalez.

Since matches restarted in Spain two weeks ago, Atletico have taken 10 points from a possible 12 and are now six points clear of fifth, as their top-four rivals have crumbled around them.

One of them is Getafe, who continued their post-suspension slump as they were held to a 1-1 draw against struggling Real Valladolid.

Getafe are fifth but without a win in the four games since La Liga resumed.

Valladolid are 15th, seven points clear of the relegation zone. Levante stay 11th.

Published in Dawn, June 25th, 2020