Mbappé Hat Trick for Real Madrid Dump Man City out of Champions League
Madrid, 20 Feb (ONA) — Kylian
Mbappé scored a hat trick, Erling Haaland stayed on the bench injured and Real
Madrid dumped Manchester City out of the Champions League.
Mbappé’s stellar trio of goals in
the fourth, 33rd and 61st minutes in a 3-1 win padded Madrid’s lead to 6-3 on
aggregate score over the 2023 champion in their two-leg knockout playoff, the Spanish
MARCA newspaper reported.
One superstar striker was watched by
another from the sidelines. Haaland was not fit to start for an ultimately
overmatched Man City because of a knee injury suffered late in the English
Premier League (EPL) game last Saturday.
Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) beat
French rival Brest 7-0, to run up a 10-0 aggregate score, and will play either
Liverpool or Barcelona in the round of 16.
PSV Eindhoven and Juventus were
heading to extra time with the Dutch side leading 2-1 to level the aggregate
score at 3-3. United States international Timothy Weah scored for Juventus.
In the early game, Borussia Dortmund
started with a 3-0 lead at home to Sporting Lisbon and was barely stretched in
a 0-0 draw. Sporting’s Champions League campaign imploded after coach Ruben
Amorim left for Manchester United in November.
Real Madrid, PSG, Dortmund and PSV
join Bayern Munich, Benfica, Club Brugge and Feyenoord, which all advanced, as
playoff round winners who will be unseeded teams in tomorrow, Friday’s draw.
They will host the first-leg games on 4-5 March 2025.
The top eight in the 36-team
standings three weeks ago – Liverpool, Barcelona, Arsenal, Inter Milan,
Atletico Madrid, Bayer Leverkusen, Lille, Aston Villa – skipped the playoffs
round and are seeded in the round of 16 draw. They host second legs on 11-12 March
2025.
The round of 16 is in a new,
tennis-like seeded bracket for the knockout stage in the expanded competition
format.
Madrid, as the 11th-place team in
the standings and No. 11 seed already knew its next opponent would be Atletico
or Leverkusen, who respectively placed fifth and sixth.
Top-seeded Liverpool will play No.
15 PSG or No. 16 Benfica.
— Ends/Khalid
