MUNICH, Germany —
Robert Lewandowski scored a
record-breaking 11-minute hat-trick to send Bayern Munich sailing into the
Champions League quarter-finals with a 7–1 win at home to Red Bull Salzburg on
Tuesday.
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The Polish striker had three goals to his name by the 23rd
minute — the earliest anyone has ever completed a hat-trick in a
Champions League game — as Bayern shook off their early nerves to crush Salzburg.
"This was definitely a statement from us, and it gives
us hope that there is more like this to come,"
Bayern captain Manuel Neuer
told Amazon Prime after his side reached the last eight for a record 20th
time.
Austrian champions
Salzburg had held Bayern to a 1–1 draw in
the first leg, but their hopes of an upset in Munich were left in tatters when
Lewandowski scored a tap-in and two penalties to send Bayern on their way to a
famous victory.
With just ten minutes and 27 seconds between Lewandowski's
first and third goals, it was the fastest of the six hat-tricks the Pole has
now scored in the Champions League.
"We knew we had to attack the box early today and get
Lewy into the game, because he is so hard to defend against," said Thomas
Mueller.
"We all knew how important this game was today. If we
had been knocked out, it would have been a very sad next three months for
us," he added.
Lewandowski from the spot
Bayern started with an attack-heavy 3–5–2, but they looked
nervy at the back and there were chances at both ends in the opening minutes.
Lewandowski forced a sharp save from Philipp Koehn with the
first attack of the game, while Nicolas Capaldo was denied at the other end by
a brilliant block from Kingsley Coman.
Lewandowski gratefully tucked away a penalty to give Bayern
the lead on 12 minutes after he was brought down by Maximilian Woeber in the
box.
Initially, the lead didn't seem to calm Bayern's nerves, and
Salzburg almost equalized as Nicolas Seiwald fizzed a fierce shot over the bar
at the other end.
But Lewandowski was in a predatory mood, and he soon added
two more to complete his hat-trick and put the tie beyond the Austrian side.
Having smashed a second penalty into the bottom corner to
double the lead, he added a third on the counter-attack, chasing a loose ball
over the line after a one-on-one with Koehn.
Bayern was now purring, and
Serge Gnabry drilled home a
crushingly inevitable fourth after an elegant passing move on the half-hour
mark.
Mueller curled a brilliant shot into the bottom corner to
make it 5-0 shortly after halftime, before Bayern switched on cruise
control.
The guests grabbed a consolation goal with a clinical
counter-attack 20 minutes from time, 18-year-old Dane Maurits Kjaergaard
smashing a Geoff-Hurst-like finish into the top corner past
Manuel Neuer.
But the hosts had the last word as Mueller stroked home his
second and Lewandowski set up Sane for Bayern's seventh a few minutes from
time.
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