Barcelona 0-4 Real Madrid (1-4 agg): Benzema HAT-TRICK Thrashes Clasico Rival

Karim Benzema scored his second hat trick in four days to settle El Clasico and kick Barcelona out of Copa del Rey.

Trailing 1-0 from the first leg, Madrid leveled the tie through Vinicius Jr in first-half stoppage time.

Benzema added two goals early in the second half – the second from the penalty spot – to put the visitors in control and completed his hat-trick to seal the win in the 80th minute.

FC Barcelona fell to a devastating 0-4 home defeat (1-4 aggregate) against eternal rivals Real Madrid at Camp Nou in the second leg of the Copa del Rey semi-final. Barça boss Xavi Hernández sat down in front of the press after the game, where he talked about the result, the future, the fans, and the damage a result like this does.

How do you explain what happened?

When football games are so even, you have to take advantage of the moments. We didn’t do that in the first half and they did in the second. They were better, there are no excuses. It’s a difficult defeat to manage.

How do you explain such a radical change between the first and second halves?

The second goal does us a lot of damage. The penalty as well… the details. We didn’t take advantage of our moments and as I said before the game, Madrid was the favorite. They’re the Champions League winners, a great team.

Does it hurt more to have lost or how you lost?

Not the how, because we competed until the end. In the first half, we were very good, but it’s what I said, football is about moments and we didn’t take advantage of them.

How do you feel right now?

It’s a difficult game to manage because this is football and I said yesterday that Madrid was the favorite. We were OK, but we became disorganized after the 0-2 in the second half. We have to learn to compete better. From my point of view, it’s a tough result to take, but we have to focus on the league and we can’t argue about the fact that they’re a great team. When you don’t kill Madrid, they kill you. We have to learn from our mistakes.

Is it a defeat with any sort of message for the future?

We have to compete better. We competed well until the 0-1. There are moments in which we can’t stop but we don’t have to blame any single player. We could have stopped the move for the 0-2 as well.