Club World Cup: Real Madrid survive late scare against Borussia Dortmund to reach semi-finals | OneFootball

Los Blancos will face familiar opposition in the semi-finals

Kylian Mbappe scored his first Club World Cup goal as Real Madrid edged out Borussia Dortmund 3-2 in a quarter-final thriller at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

Dortmund had the better of the early exchanges, but their lack of clinical edge in the final third cost them, as, with their first meaningful attack, Madrid went ahead.

Gonzalo Garcia, starting ahead of Mbappe up front once more, notched his fourth goal of the tournament with a well-taken finish from Arda Guler’s teasing cross in the left half-space, stealing in front of Niklas Sule to steer home past Gregor Kobel on 10 minutes.

Garcia is now the top scorer in the revamped competition, with his summer haul standing at four goals and an assist.

His namesake Fran Garcia, the left wing-back, doubled Los Blancos’ advantage as they swept forward with numbers. The ball found its way into Trent Alexander-Arnold’s path as Gonzalo Garcia peeled wide, feeding the underlapping right-back. Alexander-Arnold’s lasered, low delivery was met by Garcia, who slotted home emphatically.

It seemed as though the game was dead and buried, and it felt that way for much of the second half, despite Niko Kovac’s triple half-time substitution.

Finally, as the fourth official indicated five additional minutes, one of those changes bore fruit, as Maximilian Beier beat Thibauty Courtois to halve the deficit.

Mbappe, who emerged off the bench just after the hour, rubberstamped his authority on the affair just a minute later, effectively killing off any kind of Dortmund hope with a spectacular scissor kick from Guler’s floated delivery to the back post.

However, the Bundesliga side rose again - or were felled - as Serhou Guirassy went down in the box under challenge from Real’s new signing Dean Huijsen, who the referee deemed had denied the Dortmund striker a clear goalscoring opportunity.

An early bath for the Spanish centre-back, and Guirassy dusted himself down to dispatch into the top corner.

Too little, too late, you think? You thought wrong. With most expecting the full-time whistle, Dortmund came again. That renewed sense of hunger finally coursing through them. Where had that been for 95 minutes prior?

The ball was teased into the box, where the late burst from Marcel Sabitzer met the delivery from point-blank range. Somehow, Courtois kept him out, with his first truly meaningful save of the afternoon, to win the game at the death for Madrid.

Alonso’s side earn themselves a crack at the Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain in the semi-finals, after Luis Enrique’s side defeated Bayern Munich 2-0 earlier in the day.