Robert Lewandowski scored a hattrick as Bayern Munich FC booked it’s place into the Champions League quarterfinals with a 7-1 win over Austrian bound FC Salzburg at the Allianz Arena on Tuesday night.
The Bundesliga leaders won the tie 8-2 on aggregate after a 1-1 draw in the first leg against the Austrian side mid February.
Fifa best striker Robert Lewandowski handed bayern a 2-goal-lead by the 21st minute,following a pair of fouls in the penalty area — both against Maximilian Wober — and calmly dispatching the resulting spot kicks to make it 2-0.
The Polish striker completed his first-half hattrick minutes later with a goal from close range and Serge Gnabry added Bayern’s fourth soon after following a Salzburg giveaway to effectively put the game to bed almost before it began.
Thomas Muller got on the scoresheet early in the second half of the tie, netting home from a Leroy Sane assist before Maurits Kjaergaard managed to pull one back for Salzburg with a powerful shot that beat German goalkeeper.
“This was a statement, an exclamation mark,” Neuer said after the match. “We started well and presented ourselves differently from recent weeks. That gives you hope that this will go on. You could see from the start that we had a good attitude.”
It was too little, too late for Salzburg, though, who were making the first knockout round appearance for an Austrian side in Champions League history.
Thomas Muller netted his second of the game and Sane scored two minutes later as the German leaders put further gloss on the scoreline en route to a 20th Champions League quarterfinal berth for the Bavarians.
“The game was of huge importance for us,” Muller said. “Had we been eliminated today we would have faced three sad months and people would be rightly questioning things.”
The result marked the second time in Bayern Munich history they scored seven goals in a UCL knockout round match, the other being their infamous 8-2 win over the culers FC Barcelona in the 2020 quarterfinals.