Granada 0-4 Real Madrid

Finally, Ronaldo has proven his might and the full extent of his talent by not only performing his “hat trick magic” on smaller teams, but preponderantly on the best of the best in the global platform of the Champions league. It made uncharacteristic mistakes in a 3-0 loss that left the team needing a historic comeback to avoid another disappointing Champions League elimination against the city rival.

In recent weeks they’ve been in excellent form, winning five of their last six matches, including a 1-0 win over Atletico at the Vicente Calderon. Madrid also eliminated Atletico in the 2015 quarterfinals. “Nothing worked for us”.

They won both the 2014 and 2016 Champions League finals against Atletico, and eliminated them at the quarter-final stage during the 2014-15 campaign.

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Zidane refused to take anything for granted anyway as he is well aware that Los Blancos can not afford to drop more points to keep the pressure on Barcelona in the run-in for La Liga ahead of their last four games.

Real are bidding to retain the Champions League crown and assuming they do not have a disastrous second leg next Wednesday, the winners of the Monaco-Juventus other semi-final will be huge underdogs in Cardiff for the final in June. What really hurt the team were the atypical mistakes.

“Real were able to defend well and move the ball in unsafe areas”. You either love Cristiano Ronaldo or you don’t.

“(Messi) is a specialist in knowing where to be to do damage”, Barcelona coach Luis Enrique said.

Despite head coach Zinedine Zidane opted to make nine changes, Los Blancos delivered the required performance as James Rodriguez and Alvaro Morata scored twice in what was a devastating opening 35 minutes.

AS any professor of English will tell you, when someone else has said something better than you ever could then simply quote them instead of trying to come up with anything cleverer.

The Portugal worldwide has scored consecutive hat-tricks in the Champions League to dump Bayern Munich out of the competition, and given Madrid a major advantage over Atletico ahead of their semi-final second leg next week.

“It seems impossible, but it is football and football has these unexpected things that make it marvellous”, said Simeone.