Spanish football giants Real Madrid secured a spot in the UEFA Champions League semifinals despite a 3-1 loss against Italy’s Juventus late Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The back-to-back Champions League<\/strong> winners barely eliminated Juventus from Europe’s top-tier tournament.<\/p>\n Juventus beat the Spanish side 3-1 in the second leg of the quarterfinals at Santiago Bernabeu Stadium, but a late goal from a penalty shot by Real\u2019s Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo<\/strong> upset the Italians as Real Madrid won 4-3 on aggregate.<\/p>\n Real Madrid previously won the first leg 3-0 in Italy.<\/p>\n\n Juventus’ Croatian striker Mario Mandzukic put the ball into Real\u2019s net twice in the first half.<\/p>\n The Italian side\u2019s French midfielder Blaise Matuidi made the score 3-0 in the 61st minute which dismayed Real Madrid as the goal levelled the aggregate score.<\/p>\n Near the end of the showdown, Real Madrid<\/strong> were awarded a penalty kick and Ronaldo converted it successfully.<\/p>\n Juventus’ veteran goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon was sent off after arguing with referee Michael Oliver about the penalty kick decision.<\/p>\n Ronaldo netted a very late penalty in his 150th Champions League appearance, scoring his 120th goal in his Champions League career.<\/p>\n Separately, German football heavyweights Bayern Munich booked their place in the semis after preserving a 2-1 lead from the first leg.<\/p>\n Bayern drew against Sevilla 0-0 in the second leg at the Allianz Arena late Wednesday, cementing their place in the semifinals.<\/p>\n Liverpool and Italian club Roma reached the semis Tuesday.<\/p>\n The Champions League’s semi-final draws will be held on April 13.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Real Madrid qualify for Champions League semis despite 3-1 loss against Juventus as Spanish side leads 4-3 on aggregate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":60583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[135,80,127],"tags":[377,6574,1125,3028,6979],"class_list":["post-60580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","category-breaking-news","category-sport","tag-champions-league","tag-cristiano-ronaldo","tag-juventus","tag-real-madrid","tag-ronaldo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60580"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78855,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60580\/revisions\/78855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}