A stunning bicycle kick from Kylian Mbappé propelled Real Madrid to a 3-2 victory over Borussia Dortmund in the quarterfinals of the Club World Cup on Saturday.
Having missed the group stage of the tournament with gastroenteritis, the French star announced his return to the headlines when he acrobatically converted Arda Güler’s cross to the back post to give Los Blancos a two-goal lead in second-half stoppage time.
His spectacular strike came after Gonzalo García – the competition’s joint-top goalscorer – and Fran García had converted crosses from Güler and Trent Alexander-Arnold, respectively, to put Madrid two goals up inside the first 20 minutes.
Maximilian Beier halved the deficit in the 92nd minute when he drilled home from just inside the penalty area, but Mbappé restored Madrid’s two-goal lead two minutes later before apparently honoring the late Diogo Jota by holding up a two and a zero with his fingers, referencing the number 20 jersey the Portuguese forward wore at Liverpool before his death in a car crash on Thursday.
The drama did not end there as, directly from the resulting kickoff, Carney Chukwuemeka played in Serhou Guirassy, who was pulled down by Dean Huijsen in the area. Huijsen was shown a red card, and Guirassy converted the penalty to put Dortmund back in the game again.
The comeback was nearly completed with the final kick of the game, but Marcel Sabitzer’s 99th-minute shot was saved impressively by Thibaut Courtois, much to the delight of many of the 76,611 fans at MetLife Stadium.
“It’s football,” said Real Madrid head coach Xabi Alonso of the chaotic conclusion to the match. “The truth is that up until the 80th minute, up until 2-1, we controlled the game quite well.”
The Spaniard did admit that “too many things happened in a short period,” but added: “We’re in the semis, we’re happy, and hopefully it’s helped us not to get carried away, not to stop playing with that connection, with that presence of mind in every minute.”
Madrid’s opponent in the semifinal will be European champion Paris Saint-Germain, after the French team beat Bayern Munich 2-0 earlier on Saturday.
Désiré Doué, one of the heroes of PSG’s 5-0 victory over Inter Milan in May’s Champions League final, opened the scoring in the 78th minute, his left-foot shot beating Manuel Neuer at his near post.
Despite the following 15 minutes seeing Willian Pacho and Lucas Hernández both sent off – the Ecuadorian for a high challenge Leon Goretzka and the Frenchman for an elbow on Raphaël Guerreiro – PSG made sure of the victory in the 96th minute when Achraf Hakimi slalomed through the Bayern defense and set up Ousmane Dembélé, who swept the ball home.
The match was overshadowed, however, by a serious injury to Bayern attacking midfielder Jamal Musiala. Shortly before halftime, Musiala collided with Gianluigi Donnarumma in the PSG penalty area and went down in agony clutching his left ankle, which appeared to be twisted at an unnatural angle.
“I’ve rarely been so angry at halftime, not against my players. There’s many things in life that are important, much more important than this. But in the end, for these guys it’s their life,” Bayern head coach Vincent Kompany told reporters afterward, per Reuters.
“And someone like Jamal lives for this and he came back from a setback. And then it happens in the way it happens and you feel powerless…
“When I’m sat here next to you now, the thing that gets my blood still boiling at the moment, it’s not the result. I understand this is football. But it’s the fact that it happened to someone who, one, enjoys the game so much but also very important for us.”
Despite both of Saturday’s games drawing sizeable crowds, an apparent lack of interest in the competition’s other semifinal between Chelsea and Fluminense saw ticket prices for the game fall to $13.40 from $473.90 earlier in the week, according to AP.
FIFA has used a dynamic pricing system for this summer’s Club World Cup, and previously dropped prices to as low as $11.15 for Chelsea’s quarterfinal against Palmeiras, and Fluminense’s quarterfinal against Al-Hilal, per AP.
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