Manchester United are comfortably through to the last eight of the Europa League after they won away at Real Betis to secure a 5-1 aggregate win over the La Liga side.
Betis boss Manuel Pellegrini would have known his side probably needed to score early to have any chance of staging a comeback, and the former Man City coach will have been hugely frustrated to see Spain international Juanmi fluff his lines twice within the opening half hour after finding himself clean through on goal.
Manchester United manager Erik Ten Hag will also have been less than happy with his side’s first half display, the Red Devils regularly failing to make the best of time and space in the opposition’s final third.
Early on in the second half, it would be Marcus Rashford’s turn to fluff two glorious chances, the second of which the England international skied high into row Z with only the ‘keeper left to beat.
Rashford has matured player this season though and brushed off those missed chances by firing his side into the lead with a world-class strike on 52 minutes. Rashford collected a pass in midfield from the impressive Casemiro before taking a touch and firing a vicious, dipping strike into the bottom corner from 25 yards out.
Qualified ???? pic.twitter.com/cR1xtEVXwD
— Marcus Rashford (@MarcusRashford) March 16, 2023
Rashford’s strike effectively killed the game and speaking afterwards Man United boss Ten Hag was pleased with the showing his side produced, as well as reserving special praise for young attacker Facundo Pellestri who made his first start for the club tonight.
“I am happy, we like challenges. This is a good team, we have seen it against Real Madrid and Barcelona. We beat them twice so I think we performed very well.
“I think we could have gone into the lead but some moments in rest defence and defence transition they could break. We had to avoid that keep more control on the ball, and use the overload in midfield.
“Second half we were much better on the ball, much more calm. we keep the ball in the opponent’s half and let them run. And you see we created chanced.
“I think all the players did very well. Once again the players that came in did a good job and gave a good performance. So you can see we are not just 11 players we are a squad.
“For Facundo [Pellistri] it was great to come in, he had some good moments. He had a good performance in training but a game is different. At the start you have to come in but you saw after some minutes he got belief and he had some really good actions.
“In defence especially he did his job so I am really pleased with his performance.
“This time no red cards. And also no injuries. We have squad depth but not that big.”
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