{"id":798,"date":"2014-01-23T02:55:10","date_gmt":"2014-01-23T02:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/?p=798"},"modified":"2014-01-23T02:55:10","modified_gmt":"2014-01-23T02:55:10","slug":"messi-marks-400th-game-as-barca-beat-levante","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/football\/messi-marks-400th-game-as-barca-beat-levante\/","title":{"rendered":"Messi marks 400th game as Barca beat Levante"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Cristian Tello bagged his first Barcelonar\u00a0hat-trick as the Spanish champions put one foot in the semi-finals of the Copa Del Rey with a 4-1 win over Levante.<\/p>\n<p>Tata Martino\u2019s side had trailed at the break following a goal from Nabil El Zhar,\u00a0but an emphatic response from Barca saw Tello score three, with a freak own goal levelling the score and opening the floodgates.<\/p>\n<p>Levante took a shock lead when El Zhar followed up his own initial shot from Sergio Pinto\u00a0free-kick into the box, bundling home past Pinto to make it 1-0.<\/p>\n<p>Juanfran had scored an own goal to cancel his side&#8217;s lead before \u00a0Tello lashed on Messi&#8217;s through ball to put Barca ahead.<\/p>\n<p>With 10 minutes to the end of the game, Messi once again combined with Tello for yet another Barca goal before the 22 year volleyed in his hat-trick five later to give his side a commanding lead heading in the second leg at the Camp Nou.<\/p>\n<p>The game marked Lionel Messi&#8217;s 400th game for the former European champions.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cristian Tello bagged his first Barcelonar\u00a0hat-trick as the Spanish champions put one foot in the semi-finals of the Copa Del Rey with a 4-1 win over Levante. Tata Martino\u2019s side had trailed at the break following a goal from Nabil El Zhar,\u00a0but an emphatic response from Barca saw Tello score three, with a freak own [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":800,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions\/800"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}