Neymar strikes hat-trick as PSG beat Red Star 6-1

Neymar continued his return to top form with a hat-trick in a sublime display to lead Paris Saint-Germain to a 6-1 rout of Red Star Belgrade in the Champions League yesterday.

The world’s most expensive player admitted on the eve of this game that he still did not feel back to 100 percent after the foot injury which required surgery and saw him miss the last three months of last season. But he tore a hapless Red Star apart with two goals in the space of two first-half minutes at the Parc des Princes, the first a delightful curling free-kick, before completing his hat-trick from another stunning free-kick late on.

Edinson Cavani, Angel di Maria and Kylian Mbappe also scored as PSG bounced back from a 3-2 defeat at Liverpool two weeks ago to register their first points in Group C. They have a double-header to come next against Napoli, and the Italian side will surely offer a sterner test than Red Star, the 1991 European Cup winners who had been unbeaten in 34 games before arriving at the Parc des Princes and being utterly outclassed.

The Serbians grabbed a consolation goal through Marko Marin in the second half, but they could not cope with the home side’s front four, a quartet who cost PSG almost 530 million euros ($610 million) in transfer fees alone. Such was the imbalance between the teams that PSG were never likely to be troubled despite playing this game with one end of the Parc des Princes closed, a punishment following incidents in the defeat against Real Madrid back in March.