Kylian Mbappé scored a hat trick, Erling Haaland stayed on the bench injured and Real Madrid dumped Manchester City out of the Champions League on Wednesday, Marca reported.
Mbappé's stellar trio of goals in the 4th, 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.
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 a Premier League game Saturday.
Paris Saint-Germain 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 Wednesday, 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/Juventus join Bayern Munich, Benfica, Club Brugge and Feyenoord, which all advanced 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-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.
