Converting a d.m.Y string to an SQL date [duplicate]

I have a podata column in an SQL string that says 04.22.2025

I want to convert this string to a date and compare it with today, how do I do this?

$sql_my_date = date('Y-m-d');
CONVERT(DATETIME, podata, 111) >= CAST('$sql_my_date' AS datetime)

does not work