Cristiano Ronaldo scored a hat-trick as Real Madrid thrashed Real Sociedad to warm up for Wednesday’s Champions League tie with Paris St-Germain.<\/p>\n
Ronaldo set up Lucas Vazquez to head in the first-minute opener, then blasted home from Marcelo’s cross.<\/p>\n
Toni Kroos added a third before Ronaldo headed in Luka Modric’s corner.<\/p>\n
Jon Bautista pulled one back after the break, but Ronaldo scored his third from close range before Asier Illarramendi’s volleyed consolation.<\/p>\n
Confidence booster for PSG tie<\/strong><\/p>\n With Real Madrid long out of the La Liga title race – they are 16 points behind Barcelona even after this win – the Champions League is their last remaining hope for the season – and perhaps for Zinedine Zidane’s job.<\/p>\n Real became the first team to successfully defend the Champions League last season, both successes coming in Zidane’s two years in charge. But they have been poor domestically this season.<\/p>\n Zidane named a strong side against 14th-placed Real Sociedad, with only Gareth Bale and Casemiro rested from their last match, and he was rewarded with a good performance and result – a couple of defensive blips aside.<\/p>\n They could – and should – have won by more, with Ronaldo and Karim Benzema, who was booed by the home fans after missing a last-minute sitter, also hitting the woodwork.<\/p>\n Bale did come on late on, and had a hand in Ronaldo’s third, his shot being parried straight to the Portuguese to score.<\/p>\n Real – who move up to third in the table – host PSG on Wednesday in the Champions League round of 16 first leg, with the trip to France not until Tuesday, 6 March.<\/p>\n Ronaldo finding domestic form<\/strong><\/p>\n Ronaldo’s Champions League form was never in doubt this season – he became the first player in history to score in each group game, scoring nine times in the six games.<\/p>\n But he had scored only four La Liga goals before the new year.<\/p>\n However, seven goals in his last four games suggest that was an anomaly for a player who has now scored 33 hat-tricks in the Spanish top flight.<\/p>\n He looked full of confidence as he struck three times, and could have scored more – hitting the post and heading wide from close range towards the end.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source:BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cristiano Ronaldo scored a hat-trick as Real Madrid thrashed Real Sociedad to warm up for Wednesday’s Champions League tie with Paris St-Germain. Ronaldo set up Lucas Vazquez to head in the first-minute opener, then blasted home from Marcelo’s cross. Toni Kroos added a third before Ronaldo headed in Luka Modric’s corner. Jon Bautista pulled one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":400510,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10196,6304,8244],"class_list":["post-400509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-la-liga","tag-real-madrid","tag-ronaldo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=400509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/400510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=400509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=400509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=400509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}