17 April 2009
PARIS: UEFA have included Chelsea’s thrilling 4-4 Champions League quarter-final draw with Liverpool in a list of 10 classic matches to have graced the competition.
Chelsea went into Tuesday’s second-leg game with a 3-1 lead from the away leg and hit back from 2-0 and 4-3 down to secure a 7-5 aggregate victory that sets up a semi-final meeting with in-form Spanish giants Barcelona.
Three more Liverpool matches feature on the UEFA list, published on their official website on Wednesday.
First up is the Reds’ dramatic 4-2 victory over fellow Premier League heavyweights Arsenal at the quarter-final stage of last season’s competition.
Liverpool led 2-1 with six minutes remaining and looked to be on course for the last four, before an incredible slaloming run from England winger Theo Walcott set up Emmanuel Adebayor for a goal that put Arsenal in front on the away goals rule.
With extra time beckoning, Steven Gerrard converted a penalty after substitute Ryan Babel had been brought down by Kolo Toure, with the Dutchman then firing home in added time to clinch Liverpool’s progress and a 5-3 aggregate win.
But the Merseysiders succumbed to an equally sensational defeat in the quarter-finals of the 2001-02 competition, when a late goal from Brazilian defender Lucio earned German side Bayer Leverkusen a 4-2 second-leg win that took them into the last four.
Liverpool’s most famous Champions League performance, however, came in the final of the 2005 competition in Istanbul.
Trailing 3-0 to Italy’s AC Milan at half-time, Rafael Benitez’s charges stormed back into the game in the second period, scoring three times to take the match to extra time and then clinching victory in the penalty shoot-out thanks to the heroics of Polish goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek.
Milan had been the victims of a similarly jaw-dropping comeback in the 2003-04 competition, which also features in UEFA’s list.
Having beaten Deportivo La Coruna 4-1 in the first leg of their quarter-final tie at the San Siro, the Rossoneri travelled to Depor’s Riazor stadium fully expecting to progress.
But the Spanish underdogs stunned them by racing into a 3-0 lead by half-time, with a late goal from Fran capping a remarkable and unprecedented turnaround.
Dramatic comebacks are unsurprisingly prominent on UEFA’s rundown, which features Monaco’s 3-1 quarter-final destruction of Real Madrid in 2004, in which a goal from Monaco’s Fernando Morientes, on loan from Real, helped dump his shell-shocked employers out of the competition.
Also included on the list are Barcelona’s 5-1 (6-4 aggregate) quarter-final victory over Chelsea in 2000 and Fenerbache’s 3-2 spotkick win against Sevilla in last season’s round of 16, after both legs had finished 3-2 to the home side.
Manchester United’s memorable 1999 triumph earns them two places in the list.
Inspired by Irish midfielder Roy Keane, Alex Ferguson’s men fought back from 2-0 down to beat Juventus 3-2 in Turin in the semi-finals, having scraped a 1-1 draw in the first leg at Old Trafford.
More drama was to follow in the final in Barcelona, when injury-time efforts from substitutes Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer secured a scarcely believable 2-1 triumph against Bayern Munich. — AFP
http://www.thestar.com.my/sports/story.asp?file=/2009/4/17/sports/3710127&sec=sports
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