'A living football god': Reaction as Ronaldo takes center stage with Champions League hat-trick

They say there's no such thing as a one-man team, but Juventus certainly had one man to thank after Cristiano Ronaldo's hat-trick fired them into the quarter-finals of the Champions League.

Social media was awash with gushing praise for the Portuguese star's performance in Juventus' 3-0 win over Atletico Madrid which meant the Italians overturned a first-leg deficit to clinch the tie 3-2 on aggregate.

As a result of his stunning performance against Atletico, Ronaldo's stats sheet is quite astonishing.

And his in-game stats are pretty impressive, too, including the most important stat of all: three shots on target, three goals.

Some fans shared their opinion on Ronaldo's status by tweeting a distinctive heat map to suggest the Juve star is football's GOAT.

With Atletico 2-0 up after the first leg, some fans were ready to take to Twitter in amusement at Ronaldo's Champions League exit, but his hat-trick put paid to those ideas, as one tweeter illustrated...

Ronaldo, a former Real Madrid player, has a long history of rivalry with Atletico, having scored multiple hat-tricks against the side during his days at the Bernabeu.

His former Manchester United teammate Rio Ferdinand, now a pundit on BT Sport, simply hailed him as a "living football god."  

Indeed, the Juve star is the only man to bag a hat-trick against Diego Simeone's Atletico side - and he's done it more than once, too.

And the last word, appropriately, should go to the man whose goals turned the tie so dramatically in the Turin side's favor.

Italian journalist Gabriele Marcotti shared the exchange between Sky Italia pundits and Ronaldo after the game and received a typically un-modest reply from the ultra-confident Portuguese.

"Maybe that's why they signed me..."