Real Madrid won the match played in the company of Olympiakos, in Athens, Greece, with the final score of 4-3, in a duel that counted for the fifth leg of the main phase of the UEFA Champions League. Kylian Mbappe scored four times, managing to reach the “poker” in a match in which he scored the second fastest hat-trick in the history of the “star competition”, a feat achieved in less than seven minutes. Thanks to this success, “los blancos” climbed to fifth place in the general hierarchy, while the Greeks remain in the basement of the ranking, with two points collected during this time.

Olympiakos received the visit of the Spanish vice-champion in a new round of the current season of the most important continental competition, and the Greeks were coming to this duel after a series of six consecutive encounters without defeat in domestic competitions, the most recent failure being recorded in the company of one of Real Madrid’s rivals, Barcelona, ​​in Catalonia, by five goals. However, in their own “home”, the group trained by Jose Luis Mendilibar had given up once during this year, while “los blancos” were looking to take revenge for the last trip in the UEFA Champions League, when, at “Anfield”, Liverpool won.

In fact, the players trained by Xabi Alonso had not won in any game in which they were involved since the beginning of this month, when Valencia would lose at “Bernabeu”, with a deficit of four goals. The list of unavailabilities worsened dramatically for the club from the Spanish capital a few hours before the match in Greece, because, in addition to the known absences of Antonio Rudiger, Franco Mastantuono, Dean Huijsen, Eder Militao, Daniel Carvajal and David Alaba, a last-minute injury to Thibaut Courtois prevented the Belgian goalkeeper from playing for the “galactics”.

Konstantinos Angelakis, Remy Cabella, Gustavo Mancha, Alexandros Paschalakis, Ruben Vezo, but also Yusuf Yazici could not be included in the small squad called up for this match by the Spanish coach of Olympiakos. If, in the previous round of the continental competition, “los blancos” were saved by Thibaut Courtois in the company of Liverpool, but, in the end, they lost narrowly, the Greeks drew, with a final score of 1-1, at home, against the Dutch from PSV Eindhoven, in a match in which they led until the end of the game, but an equalizing goal scored in extra time by the Batavians made each team obtain a point.

The ratio of direct matches between the band from Athens and the band from the “Bernabeu”, before the starting whistle of the game, tilted towards Real Madrid, which, out of the total of eight duels in which it had met the “white-red” band, had managed to prevail four times, while the Greeks had won only once, in 2005, in the groups of the Champions League, and three other games had ended in a draw. The match played at the “Georgios Karaiskakis” stadium started with a huge goal opportunity recorded in the 3rd minute that belonged to Vinicius Junior, but the powerful execution of the Brazilian footballer was removed from under the bar by Konstantinos Tzolakis, thanks to a great reflex.

The opening of the score occurred extremely quickly, because, on the first serious positional attack, the Greeks scored. In the eighth minute of the match, a quick combination that had Chiquinho and Ayoub El Kaabi in the foreground allowed the Portuguese player of the hosts to shoot from the first, on foot, from a long distance, his attempt to score took Andriy Lunin by surprise who could not prevent the ball from shaking the net of the goal of the Real Madrid team. The equalizer came midway through the first half, when Kylian Mbappe was set up by Vinicius Junior with a deep pass, and after a forward pass, the Hexagon striker did not forgive the opposing goalkeeper and scored for 1-1.

Immediately afterwards, Trent Alexander-Arnold’s pass destabilized the Greek defense, and Arda Guler crossed ideally for the well-placed header by the “decarlo” of the team coached by Xabi Alonso, the team from the Spanish capital managing to overturn the score in a few sequences of play. It was not long before Eduardo Camavinga played a diagonal ball, high, that surpassed the Olympiakos defense, and Kylian Mbappe scored with ease, managing to tick off a hat-trick in six minutes and 43 seconds, the second fastest in the history of the competition, the record holder being Mohamed Salah (6 minutes and 39 seconds).

Six minutes into the match, the Greeks reduced the gap after Mehdi Taremi rose into the middle of the visitors’ box and capitalized on Santiago Hezze’s cross, with Real Madrid’s Ukrainian goalkeeper “just a spectator” to this phase created by their opponents. However, Los Blancos’ response was not long in coming, as Vinicius Junior passed the Olympiakos right-back and passed into the goal, from where the Galacticos’ French forward slotted the ball into the far corner, scoring a “poker” goal on the hour mark.

With 10 minutes left in regulation time, the Greek team coached by Jose Luis Mendilibar scored their third goal when Gabriel Strefezza’s cross into the Real Madrid penalty area was headed home by Ayoub El Kaabi, the Moroccan striker who won the aerial duel with Jude Bellingham, but the goal was not enough for Olympiakos to secure any points from the match.

The Galacticos have 12 points in the standings, currently fifth, three points behind leaders Arsenal, while the Greeks are in 33rd place with a combined two points. In the next round, Real Madrid will play at home against Manchester City, while the Athens team will travel to Kazakhstan to face Kairat Almaty.