It was a defeat: Manchester City 3 – Bayern München 0. And it could have been more difficult: twelve entries into the net and evident football supremacy of Guardiola’s team over Tuchel’s. But in the case of Bayern, just after the game, all football fans in the world started to wonder: will the German miracle manage to reverse such a result…? We’ve started a poll on Twitter to see if he can pull it off. 24.2% answered: “Yes, you have something.” 20.2% said: “They’ll win 2-0 and it won’t get to them.” The option “No, impossible” was answered by 38.4 percent, and “The city will win again” by 17.2 percent. We will know the answer next Wednesday.

It is always believed that the formidable Bavarian team is capable of anything, due to competitive seriousness, due to eternal efficiency and combativeness, due to winning character. And such thinking led us to evoke historical comebacks through 68 editions of the Champions League. Digging through the memories, we found a few that remained written in the annals of the competition.

We place as the first round the bells of one of the kings of Europe and the king of comebacks: Real Madrid. It was in November 1975, the merengue lost 4-1 to Derby County, the English champions in 1975. At that time, English football was above Spanish football, although not in the clubs. In the second leg, Madrid, true to their mystique, gave them a 5-1 victory with two goals – the first two – from Roberto Martínez, the Argentinian centre-forward who played for Nueva Chicago, Unión and Banfield, but who rose to fame at Espanyol de Barcelona and from there jumped to the White House, even to the Spanish team. Real advanced to the semi-finals; That’s where Gerd Müller grabbed him. And when it was your turn to face Gerd Müller, you said goodbye… Bombardier He scored one goal in Madrid (1-1) and two in Munich (2-0). Bayern won the title.

1999 was one of those games that lasts ninety and a half minutes on the field and ninety years in the memory. We consider it a return. In the European final, at Camp Nou, Bayern beat Manchester United 1-0. 91 minutes passed, the German boys looked at the clock to turn around and go home, but an unusual thing happened: Teddy Sheringham equalized at 91, and Solskjaer gave Victory of United in the 93rd German team! For Bayern de Khan, Mattheus, Effenberg…! Sheringham and Solskjaer came on as substitutes. It was for a movie. And it should be titled “Two Changes for the Crown”.

A small team did the feat in 2004. Deportivo La Coruña. He fell in Italy with Carlo Ancelotti’s super-Milan. He smashed Milan 4-1 at the San Siro and his passage to the semi-finals was denied. But super-Dépor conceded 4 to 0 in Riazor. Mourinho’s Porto used this to later eliminate Dépor and become champions.

Another unusual final took place the following year in Istanbul and again with Carletto’s Milan as the protagonist. Fantastic Milan: Dida, Cafu, Stam, Nesta and Maldini; Pirlo, Gattuso, Seedorf and Kaka; Crespo and Shevchenko. By the 54th minute, Milan was winning 3-0 with two goals from Hernán Crespo; in 6 minutes Liverpool equaled it with Steven Gerrard so gigantic that he entered immortality for the fans on the same night networks. They equalized in three, went to penalties and Liverpool won 3-2 in the shootout.

“Historic… Unforgettable… Unique… Colossal… Incomparable… Apotheosis… Epic… Legendary… Heroic… Add whatever qualifiers you want. Without fear of exaggeration. There is no way. Barcelona 6 – Paris Saint Germain 1 is the most incredible reverse of all time”. This is how we started our column on March 9, 2017. Barça went down 4-0 in Paris and it seemed impossible to turn it around. At Camp Nou, he was completely hopeless until the 88th minute. At the beginning, Barcelona celebrated 3-0 and believed in the feat, but with the goal of Cavani (an exceptional fighter) they scored 3-1, which broke everyone, the team and the fans. There he was forced to score 6 goals (for double the value of Cavani’s away goal), which seemed completely chimerical. And the minutes were wasted in front of the bitterness of the Catalan public and the fall of Barça, which became like those withered flowers, without fragrance or decoration. But football has wonderful things, an emotional component that no other sport can achieve. You can go from crying and almost unbearable anxiety in just a few moments to supreme happiness, to a state that we may never have experienced before. Between the 88th and 96th minutes, Barça scored the three goals they needed. Neymar was the hero of that happy Catalan evening. He scored a goal from a free kick, the second from a penalty and an assist for the sixth goal to Sergio Roberto. Centuries can pass without something like this happening again.

But Barcelona had two bitter doppelgangers. In 2018, now without Neymar, he escaped to PSG, beating Roma 4-1 at the Camp Nou in the quarter-finals. His passage to the next round was canceled, but the crimson team scored an unexpected and shameful 3:0 and eliminated him thanks to a goal scored on the road.

Barely thirteen months later, Barça will suffer an even worse blow, one of those that hurts life. For the semi-finals of the 2018-2019 Champions League, they beat Liverpool 3-0 in Barcelona, ​​with a great performance by Messi, who scored two goals. Messi performed a sensational maneuver in stoppage time and could have scored a fourth in front of the goal, but, in order to be safe, he preferred to withdraw the goal and leave it to Dembélé, who with all his shots gave a slight shiver in the hands of the goalkeeper Alisson. In a pitchside interview, Leo regretted the move: “It’s a shame, it would have been very important to make it 4-0 against Liverpool.” And he was right. They lived through hell at Anfield. Klopp’s team smashed them 4-0 with a disastrous performance by Barca’s defense (Sergi Roberto, Piqué, Lenglet and Jordi Alba). They scored goals that weren’t even apprentices. Liverpool went to the final and were comfortably crowned against Tottenham. One of Barca’s many disappointing performances in recent years.

He has one more, an honorable mention, in the second semi-final in 2019, that of Tottenham over Ajax. The Dutch multiple champions won the first leg 1-0 in London, taking a noticeable lead. Eight days later, they took a 2-0 lead in Amsterdam with goals from Matthijs de Ligt and Hakim Ziyech. Pochettino’s Tottenham appeared to be dead, buried and its ashes scattered by the Thames. However, the extraordinary reaction and above all the galactic game of Lucas Moura allowed the Spurs to win 3-2, with three goals from the Brazilian in the 55th, 59th and 96th. Thanks to the away goal, Tottenham reached the decisive stage. It was a match where emotions and arrivals and departures broke tactics and the game was brought to an indescribable drama. It may be one of the best performances this chronicler has ever seen. (OR)