Wednesday night saw two impressive comebacks in the evening’s Champions League ties. However, this wasn’t just any ordinary evening of soccer. One of the comebacks was impressive following a very good performance and the other was almost impossible to put into words. Of course, these are the performances of Borussia Dortmund and Barcelona.
Heading into the evening Benfica had the advantage over Dortmund with the score in the first leg ending at 1-0 despite the German side without a doubt playing better soccer. Therefore their 4-0 victory in the return leg wasn’t a huge surprise but there’s still some points to be taken from the game. PPierre-EmerickAubameyang scored a hat trick showing that’s he’s rediscovering his form after a short but worrying goal drought. The second talking point was that of Christian Pulisic. The young American scored his first Champions League goal and also picked up an assist.
But the main story of the night and what will turn out to probably be one of the most amazing matches of the year, perhaps even the decade was between two European heavyweights, PSG and Barcelona. In the first leg of the tie PSG completely blew Barcelona away 4-0. Let’s be honest, everyone said that it was possible for Barca to overcome this but did anyone actually expect it to happen. PSG fielded a pretty standard starting 11 but Barcelona changed from their usual 4-3-3 formation in favour of what could be called a 3-4-3 formation. But really the way Barcelona set out to play, other than the back 3 it’s very hard to say what the formation was due to how fluid they were.
As expected the game started off with the home side on the front foot and it didn’t take them long at at to get their first goal. On the 3rd minute Luis Suarez found the back of the net to light up the Nou Camp with hope. You could debate that this goal was very important for the Spanish giants as without it the same levels of belief may not have been there for the remainder of the match. The second goal didn’t come until the 40th minute however as the ball pinged around the PSG penalty box and eventually finding its way in unfortunately off Kurzawa. But at 4-2 in the first half you have to say it was very much game on.
Early on in the second half Barca’s dominance continued. Neymar was blatantly brought down in the box, earning a penalty which Lionel Messi then dispatched effortlessly. However then the game took it’s first surprising turn. PSG grabbed a goal through Cavani in the 62nd minute meaning that Barca now needed 3 goals in 30 minutes to progress. Given the quality that PSG have even at the point they still should have no chance of losing the game really. The game went on until the 88th minute where Neymar was able to curl in a beautiful free kick. The Catalans now needed 2 goals in 2 minutes plus added time which seemed unlikely but still very much possible. Things went in their favour as 5 minutes of added time was announced and not long after Suarez earned his side a penalty. A very very very soft penalty decision but Marquinhos gave the referee a decision to make which is always a risk. At this point the game just had to end in a special way. Neymar clipped a lovely ball over the PSG back line and it just had to be put away. The man to seal the absolutely ridiculous come back was Sergi Roberto.
Madness. Absolute madness. But it must be said I think Barcelona owe a lot to Neymar. It was an incredible team performance but when there were times that the team appeared to be losing their tempo it was always the Brazilian who kept his side going. Incredible.
