Carlo Ancelotti said Real Madrid showed their Champions League pedigree by easing through to the last 16 with two matches to spare following Wednesday's comfortable 3-0 win over Braga.
Brahim Diaz, Vinicius Junior and Rodrygo were on target for the 14-time European champions, who sealed progress from Group C even without rested top goalscorer Jude Bellingham.
Brazilian wingers Vinicius and Rodrygo have been criticised for their lack of goals this season and both responded with classy finishes to help send their team through after Diaz opened the scoring.
Madrid have four wins from four games, leading the group on 12 points ahead of Napoli, second on seven after a 1-1 draw with bottom team Union Berlin.
Madrid have now reached the knockout phase in 26 consecutive editions of the tournament.
"It tells me that Real Madrid have done better than others in this competition because getting through the group is not always that simple," Madrid manager Ancelotti said.
"We are very happy to reach the last 16, but it doesn't mean we're going to switch off in the last two games because for us, all Champions League games are there to show our best level in."
Madrid goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga suffered an injury in the warm-up, with Andriy Lunin stepping in to replace him. The Ukrainian was immediately called into action, diving to his right to palm away Alvaro Djalo's penalty in the sixth minute.
At the other end, Diaz had a goal ruled out for a foul by Vinicius, but the former Manchester City midfielder did not have to wait too long to open the scoring.
Sent through on the left side of the area, Rodrygo cut the ball back to Diaz who fired into the roof of the net from close range to break the deadlock.
The 24-year-old forward broke out into sarcastic celebration, drawing a VAR screen as if to dare the officials to try and disallow this strike.
Diaz, operating in Bellingham's usual attacking midfield role, did well on a rare start and was involved in most of Madrid's forward moves.
Bellingham, who has netted 13 times in 14 games since his summer switch, watched on from the bench as Ancelotti let him recover from a shoulder problem he suffered in the draw with Rayo Vallecano last weekend.
"I'm doing my thing and showing that I can perform, and help the coach," Diaz said. "There are very good players here but I'm showing that I can handle more minutes. Bit by bit, everything comes."
Vinicius netted the second before the hour mark, with some clever movement and footwork in the box and then a smooth low finish.
It was his fourth goal of the season across all competitions in 12 games, low by his own standards, but Ancelotti has predicted he and Rodrygo will outscore Bellingham by the end of the campaign.
Rodrygo netted Madrid's third with an exquisite chipped finish after his compatriot Vinicius played him in, and embraced Ancelotti on the sideline in celebration.
The coach had advocated patience for his dynamic duo up front and both paid him back with goals that delighted the Santiago Bernabeu.
"[The hug] was to thank him," Rodrygo said. "We have to judge people when we're not in a good moment, then you see who they really are.
"I wasn't in a good moment, the coach was always with me, always supporting me, saying good things. I was obliged to score and to go and thank him."
RESULTS
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Springtime in a Broken Mirror,
Mario Benedetti, Penguin Modern Classics
Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: HyperSpace
Started: 2020
Founders: Alexander Heller, Rama Allen and Desi Gonzalez
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Entertainment
Number of staff: 210
Investment raised: $75 million from investors including Galaxy Interactive, Riyadh Season, Sega Ventures and Apis Venture Partners
Did you know?
Brunch has been around, is some form or another, for more than a century. The word was first mentioned in print in an 1895 edition of Hunter’s Weekly, after making the rounds among university students in Britain. The article, entitled Brunch: A Plea, argued the case for a later, more sociable weekend meal. “By eliminating the need to get up early on Sunday, brunch would make life brighter for Saturday night carousers. It would promote human happiness in other ways as well,” the piece read. “It is talk-compelling. It puts you in a good temper, it makes you satisfied with yourself and your fellow beings, it sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week.” More than 100 years later, author Guy Beringer’s words still ring true, especially in the UAE, where brunches are often used to mark special, sociable occasions.
The%20specs
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Silent Hill f
Publisher: Konami
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Rating: 4.5/5
Company profile
Company: Rent Your Wardrobe
Date started: May 2021
Founder: Mamta Arora
Based: Dubai
Sector: Clothes rental subscription
Stage: Bootstrapped, self-funded
