Lionel Messi continued his sublime form by netting his 31st La Liga hat-trick as Barcelona thrashed Levante 5-0 on Sunday to regain their three-point lead at the top of the table.<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old Argentinian arrived in Valencia having scored two free-kicks in last weekend\u2019s derby thumping of Espanyol. He took his goals tally for the season to 20 after a virtuoso display, while also teeing up Luis Suarez\u2019s 35th-minute opener and Gerard Pique\u2019s late fifth.<\/p>\n
But after resting his key stars for their final Champions League group-stage match against Tottenham in midweek, coach Ernesto Valverde saw his refreshed side cruise to a third straight league win without conceding a goal.<\/p>\n
Levante started the game brightly and visiting goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen was forced into an early save by Ghanaian Emmanuel Boateng.<\/p>\n
But Barca did not take long to start moving through the gears, with Messi curling wide from long range before testing Oier Olazabal in the Levante goal with a free-kick.<\/p>\n
Just seconds after Boateng hammered a left-footed strike against the crossbar, the reigning Spanish champions broke the deadlock as Messi jinked through a mesmerised home defence and picked out Suarez who volleyed home.<\/p>\n
But Levante, who had ended Barcelona\u2019s dreams of going through last season\u2019s La Liga campaign unbeaten with a remarkable 5-4 victory in the penultimate game, came close to a quick response as Jose Luis Morales fired over.<\/p>\n
The match was all but ended as a contest when Messi bore down on goal two minutes before half-time and drilled low into the net.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m happy to have won here, because last year we came and they put five goals past us having gone the whole season unbeaten, so we knew about the danger of Levante and it was a match we had marked out,\u201d added Valverde.<\/p>\n
He wasted little time after the restart to add his second in the 47th minute, sweeping home Jordi Alba\u2019s clever cutback, before completing his treble with a simple tap-in from Arturo Vidal\u2019s square pass on the hour mark.<\/p>\n
Messi has scored five goals in two league games since finishing only fifth in the voting for the Ballon d\u2019Or earlier this month.<\/p>\n
A bad evening for Levante worsened with 14 minutes to play, as left-back Erick Cabaco was sent off for a reckless lunge on Ousmane Dembele.<\/p>\n
Centre-back Pique added further gloss to the scoreline in the 88th minute, rampaging forward to collect Messi\u2019s pass, before keeping his cool and rolling the ball home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lionel Messi continued his sublime form by netting his 31st La Liga hat-trick as Barcelona thrashed Levante 5-0 on Sunday to regain their three-point lead at the top of the table. The 31-year-old Argentinian arrived in Valencia having scored two free-kicks in last weekend\u2019s derby thumping of Espanyol. He took his goals tally for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50234,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50233","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\/50233","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=50233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50235,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50233\/revisions\/50235"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}