{"id":30867,"date":"2026-04-05T11:47:02","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T09:47:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=30867"},"modified":"2026-04-05T14:49:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T12:49:25","slug":"haaland-bags-hat-trick-as-man-city-hammer-liverpool-4-0-in-fa-cup-quarter-final","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/haaland-bags-hat-trick-as-man-city-hammer-liverpool-4-0-in-fa-cup-quarter-final\/","title":{"rendered":"Haaland bags hat-trick as Man City hammer Liverpool 4-0 in FA Cup quarter-final"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"x_ms-outlook-mobile-body-separator-line\">\n<div>Erling Haaland scored a hat-trick as Manchester City crushed Liverpool 4-0 at \u200bthe Etihad Stadium on Saturday to cruise into the FA Cup semi-finals and Chelsea also booked their spot in \u200cthe last four with a 7-0 win over third-tier strugglers Port Vale.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"x_ms-outlook-mobile-signature\">\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">Champions Liverpool played well in the opening half-hour with Mohamed Salah wasting an early chance, but once Haaland had scored from the spot in the 37th minute after a foul on Nico O\u2019Reilly their resistance crumbled.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk conceded \u200bthe penalty with a rash challenge, and there was little the Dutch defender could do as City played scintillating attacking football \u200bfor the remainder of the game.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">His blond hair swinging behind him in a ponytail, Haaland netted his \u2060second two minutes into first-half stoppage time with a well-placed header from an excellent Antoine Semenyo cross.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">Semenyo got on the scoresheet himself \u200bfive minutes after the break, latching on to a ball in behind from Rayan Cherki and chipping it beautifully past Giorgi Mamardashvili, and Haaland \u200bcompleted his treble with a shot off the underside of the crossbar in the 57th minute.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">Liverpool&#8217;s woes continued when Mohamed Salah, who is set to leave the club at the end of the season, capped off a poor performance by having his penalty saved by James Trafford, snuffing out any faint hopes\u00a0\u200bLiverpool might have had of a comeback.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12845,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-30867","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk conceded \u200bthe penalty with a rash challenge.","published_date":"","news_description":"Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk conceded \u200bthe penalty with a rash challenge.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30869,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30867\/revisions\/30869"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=30867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}