Ivica Olic scored a hat-trick to send German Bundesliga side Bayern Munich through to the Champions League final on Tuesday with a 3-0 victory at Olympique Lyon.
The four-time champions won the tie 4-0 on aggregate against the French side, who ended the game with ten men after captain Cris was sent off in the second-half.
Their opponents in the final, which will be held in Madrid on May 22 will be determined in Wednesday’s other semifinal return leg between the holders Barcelona and Inter Milan, with the Serie A side leading 3-1 from the first leg.
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The team from Bavaria, who had a slight advantage from the first leg, should have scored early on through Thomas Mueller who was set up by Olic, but pulled his shot just wide.
In the 26th minute the two players reversed their roles as Mueller was sent down the left by Dutch international Arjen Robben and played the ball into the box, where Olic seemed to at first have lost the ball, but he turned around and beat Lyon goalkeeper Hugo Lloris at the second attempt.
Surprisingly the home side, who had to win the match to qualify for the final, seldom put the Bayern defence under any real pressure and goalkeeper Joerg Butt had virtually nothing to do in the first-half.
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Any hopes Lyon had of staging a dramatic comeback were effectively quashed in the 59th minute when Brazilian defender Cris was sent off.
He was initially shown a yellow card by Swiss referee Massimo Busacca, but after applauding the decision, he was immediately given a second booking and sent off.
A minute later Sidney Govou nearly leveled for the home side with a well-taken long-range effort that Butt did well to push to the side.
Bayern put the game beyond doubt in the 67th minute when Hamit Altintop sent Olic down the left flank and the Croatian unleashed a powerful shot from an acute angle that beat Lloris.
With 12 minutes to go Olic made sure of his hat-trick when he rose to head home a Philipp Lahm cross.
To their credit, the capacity 40,000 crowd in the Gerland stadium continued to cheer their side and celebrated their side as if they had won at the end.
For Bayern it will be an eighth appearance in the final of the showpiece of European club football, with four wins.