Barca through to finals after solid display in 2-0 win over Athletic Bilbao

Barcelona secured safe passage to the finals of the 2025 Spanish Super Cup thanks to a hard-fought 2-0 victory against reigning Copa del Rey winners Athletic Bilbao in Wednesday’s semi-final in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

 Barcelona were never brilliant but played a solid game throughout and survived a couple of late offside scares to keep a clean sheet and advance to the title match, where they’ll face the winner of Thursday’s semi-final between Real Madrid and Mallorca.

Barça made a good start to the game, pressing high up the pitch and forcing Athletic into some early mistakes that led to moments of danger and creating good chances thanks to quick, incisive passes. Raphinha almost scored twice in the first 10 minutes, and the Blaugrana came out of the blocks fast.

Their strong start was rewarded with a goal 17 minutes into the action thanks to a sensational passing sequence down the left wing, which carved the Athletic defense wide open and ended with an assist by Alejandro Balde and a gorgeous finish from Gavi to put Barça ahead.

The Catalans almost doubled their lead a few moments later when Lamine Yamal won the ball back high up the pitch and played Raphinha one-on-one with Unai Simón, but the Bilbao goalkeeper made a strong save to stop the Brazilian. 

Barça had other opportunities to capitalize on their momentum but failed to generate a real scoring chance and slowly but surely dropped their levels.

Athletic began growing into the game and took a while to truly start threatening the Barça defense, but their wing play and a couple of dangerous crosses into the box eventually sent a clear warning that the Basques were ready to equalize.

 Iñaki Williams had a huge opportunity right before the break, but Wojciech Szczesny and the Barça center-backs made sure to keep the ball out of the net.

The halftime whistle came to an end in a period that wasn’t exactly pretty to watch but had plenty of fight and intensity from both sides and made it clear that the game was still up for grabs going into the second half even though Barça still held a narrow lead.

Barça started the second half by getting the all-important separator when Iñigo Martínez won the ball back at the midfield line, and Gavi played a gorgeous pass through to Lamine Yamal, who was one-on-one with Simón and took his time before finding the net and doubling the Blaugrana lead just eight minutes into the final period.

Athletic had nothing to lose, and Ernesto Valverde made aggressive substitutions trying to get his team back in the game, and Bilbao used plenty of long balls, crosses, and shots from distance to try and create chances. But Szczesny was never truly in trouble and only had to make a couple of fairly easy saves as we reached the final 10 minutes.

But the dying moments were quite chaotic as Bilbao found the back of the net twice: first, it was Óscar de Marcos who was played through on goal by Nico Williams and dinked Szczesny, then four minutes later, Frenkie de Jong lost the ball in midfield, and Iñaki Williams was all alone in front of the keeper to hit the net. Both goals were disallowed for offside, however, and Athletic were denied a chance to ignite their comeback.

The final whistle came to secure Barça’s spot in the title game, and it’ll either be Mallorca or El Clásico with the first trophy of the season on the line.