Barcelona has a storied history of producing incredible performances, but their latest effort in the UEFA Champions League may be their greatest yet. Needing three goals in the final minutes of the game, they delivered to snatch a 6-1 (6-5 on aggregate) win to advance to the quarter-finals.
After being hammered 5-0 in the first leg of their Round of 16 tie against Paris Saint-Germain, the Catalan side came into the reverse fixture needing a minor miracle to progress to the quarter-finals.
And while they went into halftime in a promising position, up 2-0, their task became nigh-on impossible when PSG scored through Uruguayan Edison Cavani, giving the Parisians a valuable away goal.
However, with 88 minutes on the board and the home side requiring a further three goals to progress, a stunning Neymar free kick, precisely curled into the corner of the net from the left side of the penalty box, breathed life back into the game.
Two minutes later, Luis Suarez went down in the box after contact from Marquinhos. The penalty was awarded, and Neymar duly converted.
It wasn’t until the final seconds of the game, though, that the final goal was scored. With just about every player in the PSG box, Neymar picked up the rebound from a free kick, beat one defender and clipped the ball over the defensive line and into the path of Sergi Roberto.
The midfielder, hardly known for his goalscoring feats, slid at full stretch to meet the lofted pass, getting enough of a boot on the ball to guide it into the net and Barcelona into the quarter-finals.
Earlier, it was Suarez who had driven the hosts towards their goal of an unlikely aggregate win, opening the scoring just three minutes into the match with a scrappy header after a penalty-box scramble.
Barca were gifted their second goal of the match when an Andres Iniesta backheel was guided into the net by Layvin Kurzawa for an own-goal.
Talismanic forward Lionel Messi then put the hosts up three goals to the good from the penalty spot, but Cavani’s emphatic strike with half an hour to play seemed to have ended any hopes of a miracle comeback.
That, of course, was before Neymar and Roberto had their say.
Also progressing in the Champions League this morning was Borussia Dortmund. The Germans easily overcame a 1-0 loss in the first leg of their tie against Benfica with a 4-0 win at home on the back of a Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang hat-trick.
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