Madrid: There will come a day when he is unable to do it any longer, when the despairing appeals to his teammates at a pass gone astray will just be the grumblings of a footballer past his usefulness, but for the time being, Cristiano Ronaldo defiantly and consistently announces himself as the man for the big occasion.
His two goals had already killed the little hope Atletico Madrid had of rescuing this Champions League semi-final in the second leg next Wednesday but the third, the hat-trick goal, turned it into something else altogether.
Once more it was a monument to the phenomenal goalscoring achievements of this footballer with 103 goals in this competition and an unerring ability to be the right man in the right place at all the right times.
At 32, Ronaldo is having one hell of a season, one that began with him as part of the reigning European champions for club and country and now, on track for the fourth Champions League title of his career. He was not Real Madrid’s best player, but he was the man to whom they all look as the final critical part of the winning machine, the finisher with ice in his veins, the most inevitable goalscorer in the history of the European game. He makes it look easy. He had scored five over the two quarter-final games against Bayern Munich.
Soon he will pass Jimmy Greaves’s record of 366 top-flight league goals and then it will just be a question of how high he can raise the bar for the next generation.
While the Portuguese’s critics point out he has lost some of his pace and the dribbling ability that allowed him to terrorise fullbacks in the past, the forward proved again that he remains as deadly as ever inside the area.
Tuesday’s treble took his tally for Real Madrid to 399 goals in 389 games, although CR7 claims he scored another in 2010 that was officially awarded to defender Pepe.
“I am very happy for the goals and for reaching 400 goals with Real Madrid,” said Ronaldo, including the disputed effort.
“We have to congratulate the whole team, we were tremendous. It fell to me to score the goals. We played well from start to finish and the goals came naturally.”
As well as a positional switch — Ronaldo now very much resembles a traditional No. 9 — he has had to deal this season with being rotated by French coach Zinedine Zidane, who has dropped him for some of the team’s away trips to keep him fresh for the big occasions.
This has paid dividends with Ronaldo netting eight times in his last three Champions League games and overtaking Alfredo di Stefano as the all-time top scorer in European Cup semi-finals with 13.
“He has the instinct for goals, he’s unique,” said Zidane. “Sometimes he needs to rest and he knows that because he’s intelligent.”
“It’s great to have a player like him,” said Real midfielder Toni Kroos.
“You can play good in defence, control midfield but in the end you need a player who will score and he did.
“He always does. He scored five in the quarter-final and three today, so it’s incredible for us.”
Real’s incredible dominance of this competition is creeping ever closer with the final in Cardiff next month potentially their third European Cup in four seasons and their 12th of all time. They crushed Atletico, who never recovered from the 10th-minute opener from Ronaldo. He had been in an offside position in the first phase of play, and while it was a marginal call for English referee Martin Atkinson, he got it right, correctly judging that Ronaldo had not challenged for the ball or prevented the defender from playing it when first it was crossed and subsequently cleared. Dani Carvajal and Karim Benzema had already gone extremely close before Ronaldo stepped back onside in time to send Casemiro’s awkward high bouncing volley into the goal with a flick of the neck. A classic Ronaldo goal, the right man in the right place, and the stadium lit up so quickly in familiar celebration that perhaps Atkinson and his two assistants, Stephen Child and Stuart Burt, were still asking themselves exactly what they had seen.
Ronaldo’s second came with 18 minutes left when he found enough space in the left channel and connected cleanly with a volley that gave Oblak no chance of saving. From there Atletico were on the rack and caught badly between pushing forward to gain an away goal or protecting the deficit as it stood. They managed neither, with substitute Lucas Vazquez the penultimate part of a counter-attack, his cross from the byline and then Ronaldo finishing unmarked in the centre for a goal that must have felt devastating to Atletico, and perfectly normal for their neighbours.
— Agencies
