Two early goals laid the foundation for Feyenoord to boost their Champions League hopes with a comfortable 4-2 win over Sparta Prague on Wednesday.
Two goals in 90 seconds from Gernot Trauner and Igor Paixao gave Feyenoord a dream start, with Anis Hadj Moussa and Santiago Gimenez adding the goals that kept them on course for a place in the knockout stages.
The Dutch home side needed just eight minutes to get on the scoresheet from a corner with Trauner's downward header wrong-footing Peter Vindahl.
The second came when Feyenoord's pressure robbed Kaan Kairinen of possession and Paixao ran from the halfway line before bending the ball wide of the goalkeeper.
Hadj Moussa scored a stunner in the 30th minute when he cut in from the right and fired a left-footed shot into the top corner. Feyenoord then failed to clear a long throw that was thrown at Albion Rrahmani via the back post, making the score 3-1 in the 43rd minute.
Gimenez restored the comfortable margin when he took advantage of a defensive slip to bundle the ball from close range just after the hour mark, while Sparta's second goal came from a 79th-minute cross that was sent home by a sliding Thomas Beelen into his own net .
Feyenoord moved to 10 points, while Slavia suffered a fourth defeat in six group matches and have a tough task to avoid elimination.
Three #UCL points at home #feyacs pic.twitter.com/DUWd1GOLhp
— Feyenoord Rotterdam (@Feyenoord) December 11, 2024
Data Debrief: A happy reunion
The match saw Brian Priske reunited with the team he took to the double in the Czech Republic last season, with his former assistant Lars Friis now in charge at Sparta.
Only Barcelona (five) have scored three or more goals in more different Champions League games this season than Feyenoord (four), who scored three first-half goals and four goals in total for the first time in the competition.
With a 2-0 lead after just ten minutes, it is the fastest two-goal lead Feyenoord has had in a major European match since September 1972.
Meanwhile, Sparta have failed to win any of their last fifteen away games in the Champions League (D3 L12), the longest streak of such wins in the competition (tied with AEK Athens, whose last game was in 2018 ).
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