LaLiga champions Barcelona have come flying out of the gate this season, with Hansi Flick's freewheeling side picking up where they left off last term and establishing themselves as perhaps the most in-form team on the planet.
Before their campaign was so rudely interrupted by a three-week international break, Barça won their first eight games of the season in all competitions, scoring 36 goals and conceding just eight. That run encompasses seven straight victories in LaLiga and a 5-1 thrashing of Feyenoord in their opening UEFA Champions League fixture.
Just to cement their absurd goal-scoring prowess, the Catalans have somehow managed to hit five goals or more on five separate occasions during those eight games. That is thanks in no small part to the incredible form of winger Raphinha, who has been excelling as a stand-in center forward after his club's summer pursuit of Atlético Madrid striker Julián Álvarez ended in failure.
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The nimble Brazil forward is already well clear at the top of the LaLiga goal-scoring charts with 12 goals from seven games (14 in eight across all competitions) so far. That prolific streak that culminated in back-to-back hat tricks last week, scored in the space of four days in resounding victories over Racing Santander and Sevilla.
After signing off with a "perfect" hat trick (i.e. left foot, right foot, header) against Sevilla, Raphinha can now claim to have made the best goal-scoring start to a season of any Barça player in history. The club captain narrowly pipped the previous record of 13 goals in eight games that was set by Cesar Rodríguez in 1948-49.
Indeed, Raphinha's early scoring form of 12 goals in the first eight LaLiga games of the season has only been bettered once in the 21st century. That was by Cristiano Ronaldo, who scored a frankly astounding 16 goals in eight games for Real Madrid at the start of the 2014-15 season.
Raphinha -- who has somehow missed out on being nominated for the Ballon d'Or -- isn't the only Barça player putting up ridiculous numbers this season. The rejuvenated Lamine Yamal has scored eight goals in as many games while laying on an additional six assists across all competitions -- becoming the youngest player in LaLiga history on record to reach (and subsequently surpass) the 50-assist mark in the process.
In short, things are going well right now at Camp Nou.
Barcelona's performances over the opening eight games of the season have given them a hefty early goal difference of plus-28. It certainly looks highly impressive on paper, but how does Barça's flying start to the campaign compare with the best starts ever made across the top strata of European football?
We've scoured the archives to find the strongest starts made to a season by clubs across the top five European leagues (England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France.) Using the goal difference accrued by a team within their opening eight games (in all competitions) as the defining metric, it would appear that Barcelona's phenomenal start to the 2026-27 campaign is very much up there with the best. But is it the best?
England: Everton, 1894-95 (30 goals in 8 games, plus-23 GD)
The club may not have had much to celebrate recently, but Everton can at least take solace in the fact that they can still boast making the most prolific start to a season on record since the English top-tier was founded in 1872. Sure, it came when Queen Victoria was still on the throne, but nevertheless.
The Toffees won all eight of their opening fixtures in the First Division, including 5-0 and 6-1 thrashings of Small Heath (soon to become Birmingham City) and Nottingham Forest respectively, as well as comprehensive victories over West Bromwich Albion, Bolton Wanderers and neighbors Liverpool. Unfortunately they were unable to sustain their form for the duration of the season and finished runners-up behind champions Sunderland.
By the same measure, the most productive start of the Premier League era was made by the Manchester City side of 2016-17, who scored 25 goals and racked up a plus-21 goal difference after the first eight games of the season. They ended the campaign finishing third in the league, behind Tottenham Hotspur and champions Chelsea.
Italy: Roma, 2013-14 (22 goals, plus-21 GD)
While hardly known for his fluid attacking style, it was Rudi Garcia's Roma team of 2013-14 that made the best-ever start to a season by an Italian top-tier club. The Giallorossi were flawless in the early campaign, winning all 10 of their opening matches to rise to the top of the table.
A handful of impressive victories also came within their first eight outings, including a Rome derby vanquishing of Lazio, shutout wins against Inter Milan and Napoli, and a 5-0 thrashing of Bologna in late September. However, a string of underwhelming draws throughout November and December saw them slip into second place, where they remained for the rest of the campaign.
France: Paris Saint-Germain, 2017-18 (28 goals, plus-24 GD)
Paris Saint-Germain cantered to a domestic quadruple in 2017-18, and it was on the cards from the beginning of the campaign as Unai Emery's side came hurtling out of the blocks. After opening the campaign by beating Monaco to win the Trophée des Champions, PSG hit Metz for five and both Toulouse and Bordeaux for six within their first eight games to leap straight to the summit of the table, where they remained untroubled for the next nine months.
Fueled by the goals of formidable front trio Edinson Cavani, Neymar and Kylian Mbappé, Emery's side scored 108 league goals in total, ramping things up even further in the latter half of the season when they hammered Dijon 8-0, and managed to score seven goals in another clash with Mbappé's old side, Monaco.
Germany: Bayern Munich, 2016-17 (27 goals, plus-26 GD)
Bayern began the defense of the previous season's domestic double in familiar fashion, scoring 11 unanswered goals in their first two fixtures of 2016-17 -- a massive 5-0 win over Carl Zeiss Jena in the first round of the DFB Pokal, followed by a 6-0 thumping of Werder Bremen in their opening Bundesliga game.
With Robert Lewandowski going beyond the 40-goal milestone once again, the Bavarians continued in the same vein from that point, losing just two Bundesliga games all season on their way to comfortably defending the title by a 15-point margin. However, their cup defense ended at the semifinal stage.
It's worth noting that Borussia Dortmund actually scored more goals (30) in the first eight games of the 2015-16 campaign, but alas the club had a slightly lower goal difference (plus-24) than Bayern's high watermark, achieved the following year.
Spain: Real Madrid, 1928-29 (38 goals, plus-31 GD)
🗓️ ¡Tal día como hoy en 1929 jugamos nuestro primer partido de @LaLiga!
— Real Madrid C.F. (@realmadrid) February 10, 2021
👉 @realmadrid 5-0 @CEEuropa
🏟️ Estadio de Chamartín #RMHistory | #RealFootball pic.twitter.com/pPrWysuZVn
With Spain's Primera División not beginning until February 1929, the majority of Madrid's first outings of the campaign came in the Copa del Rey. Los Blancos powered through to the final after marching through four, two-legged rounds that saw them beat Real Oviedo 9-2, Logroño 13-0, Racing de Madrid 9-3 and Athletic Club 7-2 on aggregate, before losing against Espanyol in the final -- all within the space of a month.
As such, Real's first eight games all came in the cup. Technically, they also played matches in the Campeonato Regional Centro -- a long-defunct regional competition that was mainly used as a feeder for the following season's Copa del Rey -- but as that was not a national competition those results are discounted here.
By powering through four rounds of the cup in as many weeks, Madrid racked up a whopping 38 goals, conceding just seven times along the way. Their goal difference of plus-31 was so good that, almost a century later, even Barça's 2026-27 effort (plus-28) can't match it.
In the modern era, a Ronaldo-led Madrid scored 30 goals during the first eight games (all competitions) of their 2014-15 season, but they also conceded 10 goals in that same period to knock their goal difference down to plus-20 overall.