Prevented with substitution
Erling Haaland knew the record of five goals in one game very well. As if shot from a pistol, he replied into the microphone that Lionel Messi and Luiz Adriano had already achieved this feat in the Champions League before him. But nobody managed it at such a young age as the only 22-year-old striker from Manchester City in the 7-0 (3-0) win against RB Leipzig on Tuesday evening in the Champions League, nobody managed it in such a short period of time (35 minutes of play between the first and the last goal), and theoretically nobody would have had that much time to add a sixth goal.
But coach Pep Guardiola replaced the former Dortmund player a few minutes after the fifth goal after just over an hour. “I told him that I would have liked to have scored a double hat-trick, but what should I do?” Haaland said afterwards. Guardiola was also blown away by Haaland’s force of nature on the lawn. “Erling was great, but everyone was exceptional. Five in 60 minutes. Incredible guy, huge talent. Power, mentality, he’s a serial winner. Really good.” The striker now has ten goals in the Premier League this season, plus 28 in 26 Premier League games. In total, he already has 44 goals.
A sixth Haaland goal would have been the sole record ahead of Messi, who scored his five-pack in the 2011/12 season in a 7-1 win against Bayer Leverkusen in a knockout stage match – unlike Adriano in a 7-0 win in 2014/15 in the group stage with Shakhtar Donetsk against the much weaker team of BATE Borisov. In the entire history of the highest European club competition, including the previous national championship cup, Haaland was the 13th player with five stalls in a game – ten before and three after the introduction of the Champions League (1992/93). Since then, 15 players have also managed a four-pack in a match, Robert Lewandowski even twice. The Bayern professional at the time was also the fastest.
With Haaland, Haller, Gómez & Co.: All CL four and five packers
Highest defeat in the knockout phase: Haaland also puts Leipzig in the history books
Sports director Max Eberl made a clear statement on the Leipzig side after the game: “In the end we lost face a bit here. That shouldn’t be, the boys are much too good for that. The bottom line is that we deserved to be eliminated here.” After the controversial hand penalty to make it 1-0 and also about the second goal, “you can discuss whether the rules worked. But if it’s 7-0, we don’t have to get upset about it,” said Eberl and added: “That was a bit of a starting shot for what happened afterwards.”
Haaand’s gala show began with a controversial hand penalty in the 22nd minute – then the City star headed in 77 seconds later. And just before the half-time whistle, Haaland made his hat-trick perfect (45+2). After Ilkay Gündogan scored the fourth goal (49th), Haaland sealed the highest Leipzig defeat in Champions League history with goals number four and five (54th and 57th). When Kevin De Bruyne then made it 7-0 in added time, RB even slipped into the ranks of the teams that lost so heavily in a knockout duel in the Champions League. No one has ever been beaten higher there. Man City themselves had already recorded such a high victory against Schalke 04 in 2018/19.
Biggest victories in Champions League knockout stages: Bayern & Man City dominate
At Leipzig, after Eberl, head coach Marco Rose did not want to evaluate the referee’s decision to handball Benjamin Henrichs any more deeply, but he also had a clear opinion on the decision after VAR intervention: “It’s no time to look for alibis, City has more than earned it won, even without the wrong decisions,” said Rose, who takes responsibility: “We don’t want to accept it like that, City was a size too big today.” According to Rose, his team had little access. “The duels in set pieces and around were also bad, we didn’t have a solution with the ball against their pressing, we didn’t get into any form of play.”
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