A well-taken brace from Cristiano Ronaldo led Real Madrid to a 3-1 win over Getafe at the Bernabeu in a La Liga clash on Saturday.
Gareth Bale opened the scoring after the ball fell to him inside the box while Ronaldo danced past a couple of players and scored to make it 2-0 at half-time.
The Portuguese – who had a goal wrongly ruled out for offside – stuck again in the second half after Getafe pull a goal back through Francisco Portillo’s controversial penalty.
Here, we look at three things we learned from the encounter.
RONALDO HITTING PEAK FORM
It’s been a strange season for Ronaldo. Despite his exploits in the Champions League, his La Liga form – like Madrid’s – has left a lot to be desired.
However, the Portuguese has come into his own since the turn of the year. In the last eight fixtures in all competitions, he’s scored 14 goals, failing to hit the back of the net in only one. He couldn’t have timed his resurgence any better.
Zinedine Zidane has spotted the rising levels in Ronaldo’s displays as well and has been wise to ensure that he maintains that steady upward trend, resting him on occasion in order to avoid an otherwise inevitable trough.
With the league well out of reach, the Frenchman has left the 33-year-old out of the squad for trips to Leganes and Espanyol of late, reserving his energy. The game against Getafe was a good opportunity for Ronaldo to get some minutes and a couple of goals under his belt before the trip to Paris Saint-Germain for the decisive Champions League Round of 16 second leg clash.
Peak-Ronaldo
REAL WILL WELCOME VAR
La Liga will officially implement the use of Video Assistant Referees (VAR) from the start of next season and after the events of the encounter against Getafe at the Bernabeu on Saturday night, Madrid will hardly have any complaints.
It’s not as if the match was at all crucial to Madrid’s targets for the remainder of the campaign, but wouldn’t have been pleased when the linesman wrongly ruled out his goal in the 67th minute.
Moments before that offside call, Getafe were afforded a route back into the game via a penalty which was incorrectly awarded for a foul on Jorge Molina but replays showed that Nacho got the ball in what was a clean last-ditch tackle.
Portillo however stepped up and converted the penalty to halve the deficit for the visitors.
Nacho’s tackle on Molina was clean
VASQUEZ MAY START IN PARIS
The clash against Getafe was always viewed as a warm-up for Madrid’s crucial Champions League clash with PSG in midweek and despite his insistence that his side are still fighting for the La Liga title, Zidane’s selection and substitutions confirmed that.
Marcelo was afforded less than half an hour of action while Ronaldo was hooked off with 12 minutes to go.
Meanwhile, Lucas Vasquez has put in some fine performances recently but was an unused substitute against Getafe after starting the previous four games in which he picked up four assists and a goal.
With a 3-1 lead to protect, Zidane may have rested the industrious Spaniard to have him fresh for PSG.
Rested? Lucas Vazquez
