Isco said he felt “alive” after his first career hat-trick helped Spain thrash Argentina 6-1 and took a swipe at his club coach Zinedine Zidane.<\/p>\n
The Real Madrid playmaker has seen his club football limited in spells under Zidane this season.<\/p>\n
However, Isco produced a superb display against Argentina, whose captain Lionel Messi again watched from the stands at the Wanda Metropolitano because of fitness concerns.<\/p>\n
Spain had drawn 1-1 against Germany last week and have now extended their unbeaten run under coach Julen Lopetegui to 18 matches.<\/p>\n
“In Madrid, I don’t have the confidence a player needs, ” Isco said in a post-match interview, as quoted by\u00a0Marca<\/em>.<\/p>\n “The matches with the national team give me life. Here, I have the confidence of the coach.<\/p>\n “I want to show that I’m a good player. Lopetegui shows me confidence with the minutes he gives me.<\/p>\n “Maybe I’m the problem in Madrid. I don’t know how to win Zidane’s confidence.”<\/p>\n After Gonzalo Higuain shot wide early on, Diego Costa fired Spain ahead in the 13th minute, before Isco struck either side of a header from Argentina defender Nicolas Otamendi.<\/p>\n Thiago Alcantara added a fourth, with substitute Iago Aspas also on the scoresheet before Isco netted his third with 16 minutes left.<\/p>\n “Despite the result, this match wasn’t easy,” Isco added. “They made things difficult for us, they were very aggressive.<\/p>\n “We mustn’t forget that this is part of our preparation for the World Cup. The victory can give us a lot.”<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: Sky Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Isco said he felt “alive” after his first career hat-trick helped Spain thrash Argentina 6-1 and took a swipe at his club coach Zinedine Zidane. The Real Madrid playmaker has seen his club football limited in spells under Zidane this season. However, Isco produced a superb display against Argentina, whose captain Lionel Messi again watched […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":414085,"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":[142],"tags":[18305,6304,18306],"class_list":["post-414067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","tag-isco","tag-real-madrid","tag-zinedine-zidane"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414067","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=414067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/414085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=414067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=414067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=414067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}