Cristiano Ronaldo broke his Juventus duck in his fourth game when his second-half brace gave them a 2-1 win over Sassuolo on Sunday, although the Turin side\u2019s day was marred by a red card for Douglas Costa for spitting at an opponent.<\/p>\n
The five-time World Player of the Year opened his account in the easiest possible fashion by tapping into an empty net from less than two metres in the 50th minute, then finished off a counterattack 15 minutes later.
\nKhouma Babacar headed one back in the 90th minute but the game ended in ugly scenes as Costa became involved in a running feud with Sassoulo midfielder Federico Di Francesco.<\/p>\n
The Brazilian escaped with a booking for elbowing and then head-butting his rival as they tangled before the Sassuolo goal, but was then sent off after cameras caught him spitting at the same player in another altercation.
\nJuventus, chasing an eighth successive Serie A title, have 12 points, three ahead of Napoli, while Sassuolo are on eight after their first defeat of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a little bit anxious as expectations were high,\u201d said Ronaldo. \u201cI really wanted to score, so I\u2019m happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sassuolo allowed Ronaldo few openings in the first half apart from an early shot which was blocked and a header which went wide.<\/p>\n
He also tried his luck from a 30-metre freekick but sent a disappointing effort harmlessly wide of Andrea Consigli\u2019s goal. But Juve coach Massimiliano Allegri\u2019s prediction that it would be Ronaldo\u2019s day proved to be right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cristiano Ronaldo broke his Juventus duck in his fourth game when his second-half brace gave them a 2-1 win over Sassuolo on Sunday, although the Turin side\u2019s day was marred by a red card for Douglas Costa for spitting at an opponent. The five-time World Player of the Year opened his account in the easiest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42257,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42258,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42256\/revisions\/42258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}