Sensational Shootouts and Surprise Scorelines

In many ways it was a wild fin­ish to the Round of 16 and it’s not done yet! We still have the sec­ond leg of the Liv­er­pool — Inter­nazionale tie on Tues­day, March 11th.

FC Schalke 04 over­came some poor form of recent days to pull off a thrilling shootout win over 2004 win­ners FC Porto. Keeper Manuel Neuer was Schalke’s hero, cap­ping an out­stand­ing man-of-the-match dis­play with two penalty saves as the Bun­desliga side go through to the UEFA Cham­pi­ons League quarter-finals for the first time ever. Schalke were under pres­sure for large por­tions of the match. The pace and trick­ery of Bosingwa and Quaresma beat the Schalke defend­ers reg­u­larly but Porto were unable to find to get any­thing past Neuer.

The match looked to be done with eight min­utes to go and Porto still trail­ing by a goal in the aggre­gate score­line. Fucile was red-carded after a late chal­lenge on Kobi­ashvili, yet López had not read the script. Four min­utes later he received the ball from Lucho with his back to goal, turned and rifled high into the net via the under­side of the cross­bar to send the Dragão wild. Those hopes would soon be dashed by Neuer’s penalty saves and Schalke’s com­po­sure from the spot.

There were two slight shocks as Arse­nal eas­ily dis­patched AC Milan, though I per­son­ally was not sur­prised by the result, and Roma dis­patched Real Madrid. Arsenal’s cen­tral mid­field pair­ing of Fab­re­gas and Flamini were dynamic in help­ing shut down Kaka and Ambrossini but credit must also be given to Arse­nals out­side backs — Bacary Sagna and Gael Clichy. Both worked tire­lessly up and down the flanks defend­ing strongly and smartly pick­ing their spots to push forward.

Despite win­ning 2–1 at the Sta­dio Olimpico two weeks ago, Roma were widely con­sid­ered as out­siders against the Span­ish cham­pi­ons head­ing into the sec­ond leg. With a lead, Roma were able to sit back and play a patient game, wait­ing to hit Madrid on the counter-attack. Both sides had plenty of scor­ing chances but the game remained score­less well into the sec­ond half thanks to some timely saves by the goal­keep­ers. The momen­tum swung Roma’s way when Pepe saw red (after a sec­ond yel­low card) for the hosts on 71 min­utes. Roma went on to break the dead­lock through Tad­dei just two min­utes later. Raúl then equalised, only for Mirko Vucinic to seal Madrid’s fate in added time.

The most thrilling matches of the round came from the Sevilla — Fener­bahçe matchup. I had a real hard time choos­ing a clear win­ner prior to the start of the round and ulti­mately the two sides needed a penalty shootout to decider a win­ner. Both teams have been over­shad­owed in this com­pe­ti­tion by more glam­orous names but I don’t think any of the big clubs were rel­ish­ing being paired with either of these clubs. After the first leg in Istan­bul fin­ished 3–2 in facor of the hosts, I did not expect another high-scoring match but that’s what we were treated to.

Volkan Demirel turned from vil­lain to hero to send Fener­bahçe SK into the UEFA Cham­pi­ons League quarter-finals for the first time, sav­ing three spot-kicks after hosts Sevilla FC had reversed the 3–2 score­line from the first leg. Demirel was beaten by two long range efforts that it looked like he should have done bet­ter on. Those two goals allowed Sevilla to take the lead on aggre­gate and forced Fener­bahçe to step up their efforts. Brazil­ian mid­field mae­stro Deivid scored twice to keep the Turk­ish sides hopes alive. In the shootout, Escude, Maresca and Alves all failed to score for Sevilla while the Fener­bahçe shoot­ers were cooler and more effi­cient, miss­ing only once.

In other scores, Man­ches­ter United advanced after defeat­ing Lyon 1–0 at home in a lack­lus­tre match. Barcelona eased past Celtic also by claim­ing a 1–0 vic­tory at home. How­ever, Barcelona’s win came at a high cost. Lionel Messi left the field in tears after being subbed off with a ham­string injury in the first-half. He is expected to miss at least six weeks. Chelsea had no prob­lems see­ing off Olympia­cos with a 3–0 score in the sec­ond leg after the first leg ended in a score­less draw.