Wednesday 2 May 2018 19:51, UK
Can Roma mount an incredible comeback for the second Champions League round in a row? We look at previous comebacks for further inspiration for the Italians...
Roma looked down and out with ten minutes left at Anfield two weeks ago, trailing 5-0 with Liverpool looking at their most rampant best. Come the final whistle, they had given themselves hope of mounting a second successive astonishing comeback, against all odds.
In the quarter-final first leg last month, Roma were no match for unbeaten Barcelona, as they slipped to a 4-1 defeat in the Nou Camp, leaving themselves with the seemingly impossible task of shutting out Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez, Andres Iniesta and co, while scoring three unanswered goals in the return leg in Rome. The rest, as they say, is history.
That incredible comeback against the runaway La Liga leaders will certainly be weighing on Liverpool's mind, and it is not the only time teams in Champions League history have faced similar challenges and found a way to turn things around.
In 2004, Deportivo La Coruna trailed AC Milan 4-1 after a disastrous first-leg loss in Italy, which saw Kaka, Andrei Shevchenko and Andrea Pirlo do the damage. But two weeks later they staged an incredible comeback, with Fran hitting the decisive goal 15 minutes from time after a three-goal first-half blitz had stunned Milan.
Barcelona produced an even more sensational fightback against Paris Saint-Germain last season.
The Spanish giants were shocked 4-0 in the French capital, and despite dragging the aggregate score back to 4-3 only 50 minutes into the second leg, Edinson Cavani's counter-strike left Barca needing three more goals in the remaining 28 minutes.
They were still in search of those three goals with two minutes of regular time to play. Incredibly, thanks to some inspiration from Neymar and a cool finish from Sergi Roberto, they got them, as PSG crumbled.
Before the formation of the Champions League, there were a further six occasions where a team has overcome a three-goal deficit in a European Cup knockout tie proper - the most famous of which Real Madrid's turnaround in 1975/76, having lost 4-1 in the first leg of the European Cup second round to Derby County at the Baseball Ground.
Jurgen Klopp's own record in the Champions League latter stages is very impressive, having tasted defeat just twice. One of those was in the 2013 final against Bayern Munich, and the other in the 2014 quarter-final against Real Madrid. Klopp's Borussia Dortmund side almost achieved a stunning comeback of their own, having lost the first leg 3-0 in the Bernabeu, but saw his men come up short with a 2-0 return leg win.
Roma will have to make history to progress to a first Champions League final as no team in European Cup/Champions League history has ever come back from losing the first leg of a knockout round 5-2, but even with the odds stacked heavily against them, Deportivo and Barcelona have shown it can be done. Two sensational comebacks in one season really would be quite something…
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