Alvaro Morata grabs hat-trick against former club

Atletico Madrid thrashed Juventus 4-0 in both sides’ final friendly before the start of the new season.

Alvaro Morata, who spent the last two seasons on loan at Juve and has been linked with rejoining them this window, scored a hat-trick against his former side as Atleti’s fine pre-season form continued.

The match was initially scheduled to take place in Israel on Saturday but was postponed and instead played behind closed doors 24 hours later.

Atletico nearly took the lead when Alex Sandro deflected a corner back against his own post and Axel Witsel couldn’t keep the rebound down, but didn’t have to wait much longer as Morata broke the deadlock after just 10 minutes. The Spaniard latched onto a cunning through ball from Joao Felix and found the very inside of Wojciech Szczesny’s net from 18 yards.

The Poland stopper was called into action again when Koke rifled a volley towards the top corner, but the former Arsenal man scampered across his line to produce a stunning save.

Szczesny then tipped away a Felix penalty but was unable to keep out Morata when his shot on the break took a wicked deflection off of the retreating Danilo.

Morata had his hat-trick when he got a delicate headed touch on a teasing Thomas Lemar free-kick, though Juve were incensed that he was not ruled offside.

Mattia De Sciglio had the ball in the Atletico net but he was actually judged to have been offside, and Juventus‘ misery was compounded in stoppage time when Geoffrey Kondogbia’s low cross was tapped in by Matheus Cunha to round off the scoring.

Both sides kick off their seasons on Monday 15 August – Juventus host Sassuolo while Atletico travel to nearby Getafe.