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Rice found the top-right corner from two dead balls in the second half as Mikel Arteta's team dismantled the shell-shocked LaLiga giant in their quarter-final first leg.

Mikel Merino added a third for Arsenal with 15 minutes to play, and Madrid's miserable outing was capped by Camavinga receiving a second yellow card for kicking the ball away deep into stoppage time.

While Carlo Ancelotti's team has become famed for its European fight-backs, it will need its best escape act yet to have any chance of retaining its crown.

Despite a fast Arsenal start, Madrid threatened on the break as Vinicius Junior curled narrowly wide and Kylian Mbappe just failed to bend his finish beyond the onrushing David Raya.

The host side looked the more assured team, though, particularly through Bukayo Saka after his return to the line-up. Rice was inches away from turning his cross home, then Madrid was indebted to Thibaut Courtois for keeping it level on the stroke of half-time.

Courtois got down to his right to keep Rice's bullet header out, then Gabriel Martinelli could only lash straight at the goalkeeper from the rebound.

Arsenal's breakthrough came 13 minutes into the second half, as Rice bent a spectacular dead-ball effort around the Madrid wall and in from close to 30 yards out.

It somehow failed to make it 2-0 when Courtois saved from both Martinelli and Merino, while David Alaba and Jude Bellingham were forced into desperate goal-line clearances.

If Rice's first goal was impressive, his second was sensational. From another free-kick, slightly closer to goal and to the left of the D, he whipped an unstoppable shot into the top-right corner.

Rice also played a key role in Arsenal's third goal five minutes later. He carried the ball to the corner of the box, and after Leandro Trossard fed Myles Lewis-Skelly on the left, the teenager's cutback was swept home by Merino. 

Madrid never came close to reducing the deficit late on, and it will be without Camavinga for the second leg after he inexplicably kicked the ball away following a late foul. 

Before the game, Rice had played 338 senior games in his career without ever scoring a brace, or a direct free-kick.

Only three Arsenal players had ever scored a direct free-kick in the Champions League – Alberto Mendez, Thierry Henry on three occasions, and Saka.

But Rice played a talismanic role as the Gunners produced one of the biggest wins in their European history. 

He is just the fifth player to ever score two direct free-kick goals in the same Champions League match, after Rivaldo, Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar and Hakim Ziyech, and the first to do so against Madrid.

Arsenal, incredibly, is yet to concede a single goal in three European meetings with Madrid, winning two of those games and drawing the other.

It is just the second English team to avoid defeat in its first three European Cup/Champions League meetings with Los Blancos, after Liverpool.