Vinicius Junior on Sunday struck a first-half hat-trick to fire Real Madrid to Spanish Super Cup glory in a thumping 4-1 win over rivals Barcelona Sunday in Saudi Arabia.
Robert Lewandowski scored for Barcelona, who had defender Ronald Araujo sent off in the second half on what coach Xavi Hernandez described as the team’s “worst” night.
Rodrygo rounded off Real Madrid’s rout as they won the competition for the 13th time, avenging last year’s final defeat by record 14-time winners Barcelona.
Photo: Reuters
Vinicius “needed two or three games to get back to his best level, and he’s back to it,” Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti said.
The Italian has now gone level with Zinedine Zidane on 11 trophies won at the helm of Los Blancos, behind only Miguel Munoz on 14.
“I’m happy, but now we’ve got to go for the 12th,” Ancelotti told Real Madrid TV.
Spanish champions Barcelona were hoping a victory could kick-start their season, as it did last year, but were left soundly beaten, after Vinicius netted two early goals.
“[I am] disappointed, sad ... this is football and today we have to deal with the bitter side of the game,” Xavi told Movistar. “We had a lot of hope and excitement going into the final and we’ve had our worst game of all of them.”
Vinicius celebrated his first goal with a jump and spin in the style of Cristiano Ronaldo, the former Real Madrid striker and the club’s all-time top goal-scorer, who plays in Saudi Arabia.
“The celebration was for Cris, because he’s my idol, and now he is playing here,” Vinicius said.
“The people in Saudi Arabia have a special love for me. I am very happy for what we did today. To beat Barcelona 4-1 is very hard and today we had an almost perfect game,” he said.
Doping fears prevented former US Open champion Emma Raducanu from treating insect bites on the eve of the Australian Open, she said, with players increasingly wary about ingesting contaminated substances. The British player was speaking in the wake of high-profile doping cases involving Iga Swiatak and Jannik Sinner. “I would say all of us are probably quite sensitive to what we take on board, what we use,” the 22-year-old said, recalling an incident on Friday. “I got really badly bitten by, I don’t know what, like ants, mosquitoes, something. I’m allergic, I guess,” she added. The bites “flared up and swelled up really a
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