Something magical had just happened, something utterly
implausible. Football, bloody hell?
How inadequate those two words sound now. All the expletives on
Earth would struggle to do justice to this. Barcelona went where they have been
every year for 10 years now, into the quarter-finals of the Champions
League, but they got there in a way they never
have; a way that no one ever has. Not just one comeback, but two. Dead,
revived, dead, revived. Somehow, they are still standing.
There is perhaps only one club in world soccer that could stare
at a 4-0 deficit for three weeks and eventually decide that it was no big deal.
Barcelona manager Luis Enrique said, 24 hours before his side was due to kick off
against Paris Saint-Germain, “If they scored four, we can score six,”
fully aware that Barça would need to win by at least five to stay in the
Champions League.
That’s the kind of certainty that winning the tournament four
times in a decade will buy you in these parts: the conviction that if any team
on the planet can produce history in a pinch, it’s Barça. No one believed him and he probably didn’t even
believe himself, but it happened. This was absurd, astonishing and agonising
too.
On the night of March 9th, the Catalan club pulled
off the most dramatic turnaround the Champions League has ever seen, scoring
three times in the final seven minutes to beat PSG 6-1 and advance to the
quarterfinals.
“I’ve never experienced anything like that.” Barcelona
defender Samuel Umtiti said.
Barcelona scored three goals in an hour to give them hope that
they could produce a miracle to overturn the massacre they suffered in Paris on Valentine’s Day – but that hope
was torn from them.
As Barcelona went 3-0 up early in the second half, the comeback
appeared to derail when PSG’s Edinson Cavani snatched a goal back. Except instead
of calming things down, it only turned Camp Nou into the craziest soccer venue
anywhere in the world on Wednesday night.
The home side needed three more goals to avoid its earliest
Champions League exit in a decade. PSG needed only to avoid an epic choke. Up
stepped Neymar, Barcelona’s Brazilian winger, with the finest seven minutes of
his career.
He scored in the 88th minute with a violently swerving free
kick. He scored again in the 91st from the penalty spot—even if Luis Suarez
appeared to draw the foul with a dive. Finally, in the chaos of 90,000 fans, he
laid on the assist off the free kick for Sergi Roberto’s decisive goal.
This time it was not hope: it was a reality. Ridiculous, but
real. Six-one on the night, 6-5 on aggregate. “So many things can happen in
95 minutes.” Luis Enrique had said beforehand, and so many things did; this
was a game that will be picked over for days and an occasion that will be
relived for years.
Minute-by-minute:
- 3: Luis Suarez goal, Barcelona 1-0 PSG (1-4)
- 40': Layvin Kurzawa own-goal, Barcelona 2-0
PSG (2-4)
- 50': Lionel Messi penalty, Barcelona 3-0 PSG
(3-4)
- 62': Edinson Cavani goal, Barcelona 3-1 PSG
(3-5)
- 88': Neymar free-kick, Barcelona 4-1 PSG (4-5)
- 90'+1: Neymar penalty, Barcelona 5-1 PSG (5-5)
- 90'+5: Sergi Roberto goal, Barcelona 6-1 PSG (6-5)
Barcelona manager Luis Enrique: "It is a difficult night to explain with words. It was a horror movie, not a drama, with a Camp Nou that I have seen very few times as a player or coach. What defines this victory is the faith that the players and fans had."
Luis Enrique had called the comeback. He’d even called the
goals. But he never could have called the ending.
“Barcelona is capable of doing that,” PSG manager Unai
Emery said. “It was all or nothing for them in the final minutes.”
Brains. Belief. Guts.
This Barça era, which now really stretches from 2005 until the
present day, has more often shown genius, strategy, creativity, technique as
trademarks. This was different.
However, there's no escaping the fact that on a night when they
did something to stun the world, something that had never been done before,
this group of players won not via a display of their stunning, plus-ultra
football. No, this was guts, strength, unity, perseverance, a couple of dollops
of luck and a smattering of brilliant moments.
Neymar's free kick to make it 4-1 - a dazzling, elite execution -
was one.
This was worth remembering because this was pure magic.
Magic from start to finish.
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