Marcus Rashford came on as a substitute in the 63rd minute for Manchester United in their UEFA Champions League clash against RB Leipzig on Wednesday night. However, in the space of 27 minutes, he created history by scoring a hat-trick and helping Manchester United to a magnificent 5-0 win over the German club who had created plenty of waves in the Bundesliga last summer. Rashford became the fifth player in the history of the UEFA Champions League to score a hat-trick as a substitute player, joining Kylian Mbappe, Walter Pandiani, Joseba Llorente and Uwe Rosler as the other players to have achieved this magnificent feat.
Rashford also matched the feat of the current Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer as he became the second Manchester United player to score a hat-trick as a substitute, after Solskjaer did it against in the Premier League against Nottingham Forest in February 1999. Apart from Rashford, the other players who scored for Manchester United was Anthony Martial and Mason Greenwood.
There were passages in which RB Leipzig managed to trouble Manchester United but in the end, the English Premier League club attacked more and they got their just results. This comes as a welcome boost for Manchester United after they lost their Premier League fixture to Arsenal and they are now on top of the group with six points, having earlier beaten Paris Saint-Germain.
Upping the tempo
Speaking after the end of the match, Marcus Rashford said it was a total team performance and Solskjaer urged the side to maintain the tempo as they looked to re-establish their consistency while winning.
“I think the manager wanted me to up the tempo. That for us means going forward. There was definitely spaces there. We got Bruno Fernandes and Paul Pogba on the ball. We looked dangerous throughout and like we could score every time we went forward. It was a real team performance. The ones who started did well and the substitutes did well too. We can't ask for much more than that in terms of the attitude and the intent to go and kill the game off. It worked in our favour,” Pogba told the media.
With Champions League success, Manchester United would be aiming to get their Premier League campaign back on track and would look to finish in the top four.
