Real Madrid defeats Roma to advance to Champions League quarterfinals

Soccer is a fairly simple game. The objective is to put the ball in the other team's goal without using your arms. Also: There's an offside rule.

AS Roma had many chances to put the ball in Real Madrid's goal in the second leg of their UEFA Champions League round-of-16 bout on Tuesday. And had the Romans taken just a few of those opportunities, they might have slayed mighty Madrid and overturned the 2-0 loss suffered in Rome two weeks prior.

But Roma refused to do such a thing and was summarily bounced 4-0 on aggregate by a team that had no compunctions about putting the ball in the goal. And so Zinedine Zidane's men move on to the quarterfinals.

Roma ruined several early chances to make Real concede its first home goal in this tournament. And then Roma's Edin Dzeko shanked a wide-open look in front of goalkeeper Keylor Navas wide in the 15th minute. Teammate Mohamed Salah hit the side netting just before the half hour. By that time, Navas had already broken Edwin van der Sar's Champions League's record of 657 consecutive Champions League minutes without conceding a goal.

At the other end, Roma's net-tender Wojciech Sczcesny made three big saves to keep his side in the contest, once on Luka Modric and twice on Cristiano Ronaldo. And then the rocket-fueled Salah capped the first half of a very open game by putting another promising shot well within Navas's reach.

Real started the second half with an aggressive push. And then Roma resumed not putting the ball in the other team's goal when Salah missed another appetizing one-on-one look.

Alessandro Florenzi, just to drive home the point – or not drive it home, as the case may be – scorer of a wonder goal back in September, cracked yet another chance right at Navas.

Since Roma pertinently refused to get on the scoreboard, Real grew fed up with the stalemate and locked up the tie in the span of four minutes. In the 64th, Lucas Vazquez beat his man on the right and whipped the ball across for Ronaldo, who muscled his way in front of Kostas Manolas and poked it home. It was his 90th Champions League goal, building his league in the all-time record over Lionel Messi to eight.

Then James Rodriguez overlapped Ronaldo on his left on a breakaway, got a perfectly-weighted ball from the aging master, and whacked it through Szczesny's legs.

Ronaldo very nearly added a third in the minute thereafter but slipped his finish just wide.

The outcome was hardly unfair. Roma may have had the better of the chances, but Real mass produced its own scoring opportunities. For a sixth year in a row, Madrid has reached the final eight. The 10-time record champions of this tournament seek to win it a second time in three years.