For those who didn't wake up at 6 a.m. ET to watch Real Madrid annihilate Granada 9-1 at the Santiago Bernabeu on Sunday, you missed a lot of goal scoring – the majority of it done by Cristiano Ronaldo.
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Ronaldo helped Real unmercifully
tear apart a Granada side that sits 19th in the La Liga standings by
scoring five times – including a hat trick in just eight minutes – to
help Los Blancos move within a point of first-place Barcelona (which
plays Sunday at Celta de Vigo). Ronaldo now has 36 league goals, four more than Messi, in the race to become La Liga's top scorer.
Amazingly, Ronaldo had never scored five goals in a game for Real Madrid before Sunday. After Gareth Bale opened the scoring in the 25th minute, Ronaldo began his assault on Granada with a curling strike set up by James Rodriguez in the 30th minute.
Six minutes later, goalkeeper Oier Olazabal deflected a hard cross by
Marcelo high into the air. The ball fell at the feet of Ronaldo, who let
it bounce before burying the one-time strike for goal No. 2.
Ronaldo's third goal probably should've been saved, but it was a classic
CR7 strike nonetheless with him dribbling from the left wing. Instead
of feeding an overlap run on the outside, Ronaldo caught the Granada
defense ball-watching as he quickly unleashed a vicious strike straight
at Olazabal, whose parry attempt couldn't keep the ball out for a 4-0
Real Madrid cushion.
Ronaldo could've ended up with
eight goals. After Karim Benzema scored his second to make it 7-0,
Ronaldo failed to convert on chances created by Bale and Alvaro Arbeloa
and missed out on a tap-in on Granada defender Diego Mainz's own goal
that made it 8-1 Real.
Can't wait to see what Messi does against Celta.
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