Munich, March 12 (IANS) An early straight red card for Shakhtar Donetsk got the ball rolling for clinical and dominant Bayern Munich who celebrated a 7-0 goal festival on home soil in the second leg of the European Champions League round of 16.
Bayern cruised into the Champions League quarter-finals for the eighth time in nine years. Meanwhile ten-men Shakhtar crashed out following a harmless performance and a heavy 0-7 loss on Wednesday, reports Xinhua.
The visitors from Donetsk ensured the worst possible start to the game as Olexandr Kucher saw the fastest red card in the tournament history. He brought down Mario Goetze inside the box as the last man, with just three minutes played at the Allianz Arena stadium.
As a consequence, Bayern took the lead from the spot when Thomas Mueller converted by sending Donetsk goalkeeper Andriy Pyatov the wrong way.
Bayern controlled the proceedings on the pitch with a high percentage of ball possession against the decimated visitors.
Yet, the hosts had to wait until the 34th minute before Jerome Boateng doubled the lead. The defender made use of a saved effort by Mueller to tap into the open goal at the far post corner from very close range.
After the restart Bayern started where they left off whereas ten-men Donetsk struggled to keep the hosts at a distance. Thus, Bayern combined their way through the visitor’ s defence when Franck Ribery slotted home a one-two with David Alaba to make it 3-0 with just four minutes into the second half.
Donetsk were unable to put up some resistance as Thomas Mueller sealed his brace only three minutes later into the empty net.
The German giants where not done with the scoring as Holger Badstuber headed home Bayern’ s fifth goal before Robert Lewandowski chested down a long ball to overcome Pyatov for the six goal lead.
Bayern still kept pressing for another goal and they were rewarded as Mario Goetze rounded off the 7-0 lead in the dying minutes of the game.
Bayern reached the quarter-finals for the fourth consecutive time; in addition, they equalled their highest win from 2012 against FC Basel.