Real Madrid hammered Athletic Bilbao at the Santiago Bernabeu to cut the cap between themselves and first-place Barcelona to eight points. It didn't take long for the hosts to grab the lead, with Karim Benzema finishing off a delicious pass from Luka Modric, and a pair of goals around the half hour mark made the rest of the game a formality -- Sergio Ramos pulling off a well executed diving header to knock Mesut Ozil's delivery past Gorka Iraizoz before Benzema completed his brace by cutting back to the edge of the box and unleashing a curling effort for Real Madrid's third.
Real Madrid vs. Athletic Bilbao: Final score 5-1, Athletic annihilated by Los Blancos
Visiting the Santiago Bernabeu is never fun, and with Karim Benzema in a goalscoring mood Athletic Bilbao were perhaps lucky to only concede five.
Although Athletic managed to claw one back before halftime when Ibai Gomez hammed home a cutback from eighteen yards, the day clearly belonged to Madrid and they scored twice more before the match was done, with a Mesut Ozil tap-in followed twenty minutes later by Iraizoz deciding to treat Sami Khedira to a goal to celebrate the midfielder's comeback from injury problems.
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