Haaland scores five as City cruise into the last eight

Erling Haaland scored five as Manchester City easily brushed RB Leipzig aside to book their spot in the last eight of the Champions League.

Action: Pep Guardiola made just one change from the Manchester City team that fought hard for a win at Selhurst Park at the weekend with Kevin De Bruyne – who received a little bit of criticism from his manager this week – in the place of Foden.

It was De Bruyne who was instrumental for the home side throughout the game and the Belgian should have had an assist when his early cross found Ilkay Gundogan early on only for the German to fire over.

City were dominant throughout the game but they were given a controversial opening goal. A Rodri header from a corner was eventually looked at by VAR who ruled that Benjamin Henrichs’ arm getting in the way mid-jump was sufficient for a penalty.

The call looked soft but there was no sympathy from Erling Haaland who hammered his penalty low into the bottom right corner with Janis Blaswich unable to get close to it.

Just seconds after the restart the Norwegian got his second goal of the game. Leipzig suffered under City’s high press and gave the ball away. Haaland headed down for De Bruyne, whose shot thundered off the crossbar. Haaland was the quickest to react to it, heading the ball into the net from close range to make it 2-0 on the night and 3-1 on aggregate.

The tie was effectively killed off just before half-time. Leipzig failed to deal with a City corner with Rúben Dias’ header coming off the post and rolling across the goal line. Amadou Haidara tried to clear the ball but struck it straight at Haaland to cap a fifth hat-trick of the season for the striker.

The home side made it look easy for the fourth goal. Jack Grealish teed up Gundogan who found a yard of space and drilled a low drive into the bottom corner.

Haaland got his fourth and fifth goals of the game in quick succession. The fourth (and fifth for City) came in the 53rd minute. Again, Leipzig couldn’t deal with a corner with the ball bouncing around the area – not ideal when a predator like Haaland is sniffing around to finish.

Then, Haaland’s fifth (and City’s sixth) came from another set piece. This time  free-kick swung in with Blaswich not managing to get his safe far away allowing for Haaland once again to be in the right place at the right time to bury the ball into the net

Mercifully for Leipzig, Guardiola elected to take off the striker with Julián Álvarez coming on as the Citizens were able to enjoy a much easier final half-hour than they might have expected.

De Bruyne finished off the scoring in stoppage time to make it 7-0 on the night and 8-1 on aggregate wit ha sublime finish from the outside of the box – that was the Belgian going back to basics, apparently.

Man of the Match: Erling Haaland obviously gets this award with five goals to his name. But despite that, we do want to give an honourable mention to Kevin De Bruyne, who was instrumental behind much of City’s good play and scored a beautiful goal to cap the victory.

Stat of the Day: Haaland’s five goals is just the third time a player has scored a quintuple in the Champions League with Lionel Messi being the first (for Barça against Leverkusen in 2012) and Luiz Adriano the second (for Shakhtar against BATE in 2014).

FULL-TIME | Through to the #UCL quarter-finals! 💥

🔵 7-0 ⚫️ #ManCity pic.twitter.com/Nzgp34Wzua

— Manchester City (@ManCity) March 14, 2023