Every player to score four goals against Real Madrid in La Liga

To score four goals in one match – a poker as its known in Spain – is a rare set of cards to be dealt.

Since Antonio Emery – future manager Unai Emery’s grandfather – conceded the first strike in the history of La Liga nearly a century ago, less than 150 players have ever felt the incandescent joy of scoring as many as four goals in the same game.

Yet, only half a dozen have ever achieved such a feat against the most successful club in the history of the competition, Real Madrid.

Here are each of the select few to have hit those heights against such regal opposition.

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The likes of Johan Cruyff, Romario and Lionel Messi have all been part of Barcelona sides to beat Real Madrid 5-0 but none of them scored as many as four goals in those historic thrashings.

A victory of that scale in El Clasico has become known as la manita – the little hand. When Martin Ventolra bagged a quadruple in Barcelona’s 5-0 thumping of Madrid in 1935, four of the fingers held up belonged to him.

Madrid famously never know when they are beaten. It’s a truism proved throughout the club’s run to a 14th European Cup in 2022 and long before the competition they would dominate was even invented.

Espanyol’s Vicente Martinez Catala had completed his hat trick – and seen teammate Gabriel Jorge find the net as well – inside the opening hour of a seemingly routine league game in March 1940.

However, Los Blancos would not lie down, scoring twice before Catala notched his poker. Two goals separated by less than two minutes left the Catalan hosts hanging on in bonkers 5-4 ding dong.

What better way to start a season than rattling four unanswered goals past Real Madrid?

As La Liga continued regardless of the Second World War, Emilin fired Real Oviedo into a 3-0 lead…