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Sport Nation
Mbappe hat-trick knocks Manchester City out of Champions League
AP • February 20th, 2025 11:30 am
Photo: AP
Kylian Mbappe has scored a hat-trick, Erling Haaland stayed on the bench injured and Real Madrid dumped Manchester City out of the Champions League.
Mbappe's stellar trio of goals in the fourth, 33rd and 61st minutes in a 3-1 win on Thursday (NZ time) padded Madrid's lead to 6-3 on aggregate over the 2023 champions in their two-leg knockout playoff.
One superstar striker was watched by another from the sidelines. Haaland was not fit to start for an ultimately overmatched City because of a knee injury suffered late in a Premier League game on Saturday.
Paris Saint-Germain beat French rivals Brest 7-0, to run up a 10-0 aggregate score, and will play either Liverpool or Barcelona in the round of 16.
In the early game Wednesday, Borussia Dortmund started with a 3-0 lead at home to Sporting Lisbon and were 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 and Dortmund join Bayern Munich, Benfica, Club Brugge and Feyenoord, who all advanced on Tuesday, as playoff round winners who will be unseeded teams in Friday's draw. They will host the first-leg games on March 4-5.
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 March 11-12.
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-placed team in the standings and No.11 seed already knew their next opponents would be Atletico or Leverkusen, who respectively placed fifth and sixth.
Top-seeded Liverpool will play No.15 PSG or No.16 Benfica.
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