Cristiano Ronaldo Equal to George Best, Pele After Atleti Tie, Says Phil Neville

Phil Neville has hailed Real Madrid star Cristiano Ronaldo as being equal to Pele and George Best following his hat-trick in the UEFA Champions League semi-final win over Atletico Madrid on Tuesday. 

BBC Sport pundit Neville praised his former Manchester United team-mate after he inspired Real to a 3-0 victory and likened him to some of football's greats: 

"I listened to my dad talk for 20 years about George Best and Pele, and Cristiano Ronaldo is easily the equal of those."

Neville believes Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are "the two best players who have ever lived," and returning to the former, continued: "You are talking about someone who scores left foot, right foot and he is fantastic in the air. The way he can control the ball with both feet, the speed at which he runs—at 32 years of age he has just scored a hat-trick in a semi-final."

Ronaldo opened the scoring inside 10 minutes when he rose above Stefan Savic to nod in Casemiro's volleyed cross and lashed home a half-volley deep into the second half to make it 2-0.

The forward rounded out the scoring when he converted Lucas Vazquez's pull-back with five minutes of normal time remaining.

BT Sport's Gary Lineker was also in awe of the superstar:

The hat-trick took Ronaldo's tally to eight goals in this year's knockout stages, following on from a brace and a hat-trick in the two quarter-final legs against Bayern Munich.

By his own standards the 32-year-old has been somewhat disappointing this year, but he has shown up for the biggest games, as noted by football journalist Rafael Hernandez:

As demonstrated by Sky Sports Statto, the Portuguese has long been a force to be reckoned with in Europe's premier competition:

Barring a tremendous upset, Ronaldo will have the chance to win his fourth Champions League title in June's final.

Ronaldo will already go down in history among football's greatest—equal to or perhaps even ahead of the likes of Pele, Best and Diego Maradona—and winning the Champions League again will only cement his legacy further.

He may be starting to decline as he gets older, but even so he's still more than capable of producing some breathtaking performances.