CHAMPIONS LEAGUE
Paris, Nov 27: On a wild Champions League night with stellar teenage scorers, Kylian Mbappé also struck four including the second-fastest Champions League hat trick ever to show the old guys have still got it.
Arsenal took Bayern Munich’s top spot in the standings with a 3-1 win, title holder Paris Saint-Germain romped to a 5-3 win over Tottenham with Vitinha scoring a hat trick, and Liverpool slumped to another loss at Anfield, 4-1 to PSV Eindhoven.
The 26-year-old Mbappé scored three times for Real Madrid between the 22nd and 29th minutes, and again in the 60th, of a 4-3 win at Olympiakos.
At age 17 – the same as when Mbappé was launching his Champions League career at Monaco – Lennart Karl and Viktor Dadason both scored Wednesday, and so did 18-year-old Geovany Quenda.
Karl’s exquisite first-timer for Bayern leveled the game in the first half but barely bothered Arsenal in a clash of the Premier League and Bundesliga leaders. It was Bayern’s first loss this season.
Only Arsenal now has five straight wins in the Champions League after Inter Milan lost 2-1 at Atletico Madrid, whose captain José María Giménez won it with a stoppage-time header – the 42nd and last goal on the nine-game slate.
In Copenhagen, Dadason set the Danish champion on its way to a three-goal lead in a 3-2 win over Kairat Almaty.
In Lisbon, Quenda opened the scoring in Sporting’s 3-0 win over Club Brugge, spinning almost a full circle to hook a left-footed shot into the corner of the net.
The exciting wing-back will join Chelsea after the season.
At the other end of the age scale, 38-year-old David Luiz scored with a soaring header to help Pafos to a 2-2 draw with Monaco.
He became the second-oldest scorer in the Champions League, behind only another veteran defender Pepe, who was approaching his 41st birthday when he scored for Porto two seasons ago.
Atalanta won 3-0 at Eintracht Frankfurt with three goals in five minutes starting with Ademola Lookman in the 60th.
Mbappe’s fast hat trick
Three goals in a span of six minutes, 42 seconds was fast by Kylian Mbappé, but not quite the fastest ever in the Champions League. That was Mohamed Salah’s in six minutes, 12 seconds for Liverpool against Rangers in October 2022.
Mbappé is now second fastest, with his second hat trick in the competition this season, and fifth of his Champions League career.
He’s also now top scorer this season with nine, ahead of the now-injured Victor Osimhen who has six for Galatasaray.
Dadason’s big future
Viktor Dadason already was the third-youngest scorer in the Champions League ‘s 34-season history last month in Copenhagen’s 4-2 loss at Borussia Dortmund. Only Ansu Fati and Lamine Yamal were younger than the Iceland youth international when they scored their first goals for Barcelona.
The 6-foot-3 (1.93 meter) Dadason set Copenhagen on the way to a three-goal lead Wednesday with a header in the 26th.
However, the Danish champion had to hang on for a 3-2 win over Kairat Almaty, which scored twice late on yet ended the night 35th in the standings above only hapless Ajax.
Veteran David Luiz
David Luiz returned to Europe at age 38, after four years in his native Brazil, to help Cyprus champion Pafos in its debut Champions League season.
The former Brazil star scored his first goal in the competition since October 2017 with a powerful header into the Monaco net at a corner.
However, his previous Champions League goal came in his second spell at Chelsea where he was key in the 2012 Champions League title-winning team. Monaco held a 2-1 lead from the 26th, when United States forward Folarin Balogun intercepted a pass by goalkeeper Neofytos Michaeland to score with a low shot.
On the other hand, Pafos leveled in the 88th when the ball struck Monaco defender Mohammed Salisu after rebounding from the crossbar for an own goal.
On a night that blended youthful exuberance with seasoned brilliance, the Champions League once again underlined why it remains football’s most compelling theatre.
From Mbappé’s blistering four-goal showcase to the fearlessness of teenagers announcing themselves on Europe’s grandest stage, the evening offered a sweeping reminder of the competition’s generational pull. (AP)
