Barcelona rallies to defeat Oviedo 3-1 in Spanish league after blunder by goalkeeper Joan García

MADRID (AP) — Barcelona overcame a blunder by goalkeeper Joan García to come from behind and win 3-1 at promoted Oviedo in the Spanish league on Thursday.

Barcelona trailed after García gave the ball away when he left the area and Alberto Reina scored for the hosts with a shot from near the midfield circle.

The Catalan club rallied in the second half with goals by Eric García, Robert Lewandowski and Ronald Araujo to secure its fifth win in six league matches.

The result left Barcelona two points behind leader Real Madrid, which won 4-1 at promoted Levante on Tuesday to maintain a perfect record after six rounds.

“In the first half we struggled with the scoring opportunities but in the second we picked up the pace and got the three goals and the victory that is very important for us,” Lewandowski said.

Joan García's mistake came as he ventured outside the area to intercept a long pass in the 33rd minute. He used his right thigh to get the ball over one opponent and then his left foot to clear another Oviedo player, but ended up sending the ball into the middle of the field near where Alberto Reina was standing.

Reina immediately sent a booming one-touch shot over the Barcelona defenders and into the open net from about 35 meters (yards) away. The ball bounced once just ahead of the line before going in.

“I saw the goalkeeper make the mistake with the pass and I decided to take a chance,” Reina said. “The moment I struck it I knew it was going to be good. It was my first goal in the first division and I'll never forget it.”

García was signed by Barcelona from city rival Espanyol this summer and earned the chance to start in goal after regular No. 1 Marc-André Ter Stegen underwent surgery for a lower back ailment.

“He is the backup for the last line and normally he is really good. One mistake,” Barcelona coach Hansi Flick said of the blunder. “We came back and we won and this is the most important.”

Defender Eric García equalized for Barcelona in the 56th from close range after Ferran Torres' initial attempt hit the far post after being partially redirected by Oviedo goalkeeper Aarón Escandell.

Lewandowski scored the go-ahead goal for Barcelona with a firm header off a cross by Frenkie de Jong in the 70th, five minutes after the veteran Poland striker had replaced Raphinha.

Araujo sealed the victory with another header in the 88th after a corner kick taken by Marcus Rashford.

Oviedo, led by veteran playmaker Santi Cazorla, had scored only once this season, in a 1-0 win against Real Sociedad. It lost all of its other four matches in its return to the first division following an absence of more than two decades.

It was another goalkeeper mistake that allowed Elche to score a stoppage-time equalizer and earn a 1-1 draw at Osasuna.

Osasuna's Sergio Herrera charged from his net to try to block an attempt by Adria Pedrosa but didn't properly commit and the ball went through his legs, allowing Pedrosa to get to it and score.

Elche, also promoted to the first division this season, had won two of its last three matches. It sits in fifth place.

Osasuna is winless in its last two games.

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

Barcelona's Marcus Rashford fights for the ball against Real Oviedo's Rahim Alhassane during a Spanish La Liga soccer match at the Carlos Tartiere stadium in Oviedo, Spain, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Breton)

Barcelona's Ronald Araujo celebrates his side's third goal during a Spanish La Liga soccer match at the Carlos Tartiere stadium in Oviedo, Spain, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Breton)

Barcelona's Robert Lewandowski celebrates his side's second goal during a Spanish La Liga soccer match at the Carlos Tartiere stadium in Oviedo, Spain, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Breton)

Barcelona's Robert Lewandowski scores his side's second goal during a Spanish La Liga soccer match at the Carlos Tartiere stadium in Oviedo, Spain, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Breton)

ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia General Assembly ended its annual session early Friday without a plan for new equipment to overhaul the state's voting system by a July deadline, plunging into doubt the future of elections in the political battleground.

The lawmakers' failure to offer a solution after months of debate raises uncertainty about how Georgians will vote in November and leaves confusion that could end in the courts or a special legislative session.

“They’ve abdicated their responsibility,” Democratic state Rep. Saira Draper said of inaction by Republicans who control the legislature.

Currently, voters make their choices on Dominion Voting machines, which then print ballots with a QR code that scanners read to tally votes. Those machines have been repeatedly targeted by President Donald Trump following his 2020 election loss, and Trump’s Georgia supporters responded by enacting a law in 2024 that bans using barcodes to count votes.

But state law still requires counties to use the machines. No money has been allocated to reprogram them, and lawmakers failed to agree on a replacement.

“We’ll have an unresolvable statutory conflict come July 1,” said House Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Victor Anderson, a Cornelia Republican who backed a proposal to keep using the machines in 2026 that Senate Republicans declined to consider.

House Republicans and Democrats backed Anderson's plan, which would have required that Georgia choose a voting process that didn't use QR codes by 2028. Election officials preferred that solution.

“The Senate has shown that they’re not responsible actors,” Draper said. She added that Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Trump-endorsed Republican running for governor, seemed more interested in keeping Trump's backing than “doing right by Georgia voters.”

A spokesperson for Jones didn't immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday.

Joseph Kirk, Bartow County election supervisor and president of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, said he’ll look to the secretary of state for guidance and assumes a judge will rule to instruct election officials how to proceed.

“This is uncharted territory,” he said.

Robert Sinners, a spokesperson for Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is also running for governor, said officials are “ready to follow the law and follow the Constitution.”

Republican House Speaker Jon Burns told reporters that his chamber was seeking to minimize changes this year.

“You can’t change horses in the middle of the stream,” Burns said.

Burns said he would meet with Gov. Brian Kemp and “take his temperature" on the possibility of a special session. A spokesperson for Kemp didn't answer questions about what the outgoing Republican governor would do.

Anderson said without action, the state could be required to use hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots in November.

Election officials say switching to a new system within just a few months, as advocated by some Republicans, would be nearly impossible.

“They made no way for this to happen except putting a deadline on it," Cherokee County elections director Anne Dover said of the switch away from barcodes. Dover said one problem under some plans is that a very large number of ballots would have to be printed.

Lawmakers seemed more concerned about scoring political points than making practical plans, Paulding County Election Supervisor Deidre Holden said.

“If anyone is resilient and can get the job done, it’s all of us election officials, but the legislators need to work with us, and they need to understand what we do before they go making laws that are basically unachievable for us,” Holden said.

Supporters of hand-marked paper ballots say voters are more likely to trust in an accurate count if they can see what gets read by the scanner.

Right-wing election activists lobbied lawmakers for an immediate switch to hand-marked paper ballots, but the House turned away from a Senate proposal to do so.

Anderson said he wasn’t sure if a special session could escape those political crosswinds, but said Georgia lawmakers must fix the problem.

“This is a legislative problem,” Anderson said. “It’s a legislative solution that has to happen.”

FILE - Voting machines are seen at the Bartow County Election office, Jan. 25, 2024, in Cartersville, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)