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Ronaldo’s hat-trick takes Portugal on a stroll against Luxembourg

Cristiano Ronaldo
© Portugal FA
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On a World Cup Qualifier against Luxembourg, Cristiano Ronaldo helped Portugal take a stroll in front of their own crowd on Tuesday. 

Cristiano Ronaldo keeps making history with Portugal after scoring a fresh hat-trick that allowed his national team gets a 5-0 victory against Luxembourg. With this result, they reach 16 points with one point below Serbia and one more match to play. Over the Qualifiers in their sector, Portugal is proving they are one of the top dogs that are currently trying to make it to the tournament. Inside Portugal’s group, the top spot goes through directly and the second spot goes to a knock-out round.

Today, Cristiano got two consecutive penalties that were only five minutes apart. He got taken down inside the box twice and earned his chance to score both penalties. That was a brace before the 20th minute of the first half that Bruno Fernandes rounded up with a third goal. We still hadn’t gotten through the first half-hour of the game and Portugal was already winning 3-0 against Luxembourg. It wasn’t hard to tell the massive level difference between both sides.

Ronaldo seals the hat-trick with suspense. 

For the second half, Bruno Fernandes still wanted to keep making a difference through his ball control as he does at Manchester United. He set Palhinha up for his goal that granted Portugal their fourth of the evening. With only a few minutes left on the game, Cristiano Ronaldo kept pushing to score his hat-trick. He finally did after an assist from Gonçalo Guedes, who possibly gave him the pass when Ronaldo was in an illegal position.

But VAR intervened and confirmed it was a legal goal. Before his hat-trick, there was a beautiful moment in which Cristiano attempted a fresh bicycle kick that the Luxembourg goalie saved in spectacular fashion. With these three goals, Ronaldo becomes the first European footballer in history to score 10 hat-tricks in history. He also reached the impressive number of 115 goals scored with his national team. The gift that keeps on giving.

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