Barca scripts stunning comeback to win UCL tie 6-5 after being down 4-0 in first leg
Barca beat PSG 6-1 in dying minutes to reach quarters as football world is stunned
Barcelona, March 9: Barcelona were hailed as living legends on Thursday after Neymar helped the Spanish giants pull off a Nou Camp miracle with a dying minutes Champions League win over stunned Paris SaintGermain.
The Brazilian forward played the game of his life as Barcelona made up a 0-4 first leg deficit by winning 6-1 in front of nearly 100,000 ecstatic fans at the Camp Nou stadium for an astonishing 6-5 aggregate triumph.
“You have become legends,” headlined the Barcelona Sport daily while El Munda spoke of the ‘miracle of a lifetime.’
Sergi Roberto scored in the fifth minute of stoppage time as Barcelona capped a sensational fightback and reach the quarter-finals on Wednesday.
“I threw myself at it with everything,” Roberto told BeIN Sports Spain as his outstretched leg turned home Neymar’s cross.
Despite Luis Suarez’s early opener, a Layvin Kurzawa own goal and Lionel Messi’s penalty, Barca, who lost the first leg 4-0, looked down and out when Edison Cavani volleyed home what seemed to be the vital away goal for PSG.
However, Neymar restored Barca’s belief as he firstly fired home a sensational free-kick two minutes from time and then converted from the penalty spot.
And Roberto capped the biggest comeback in Champions League history when he stretched to turn home Neymar’s dinked cross to the delight of a near 100,000 at a rocking Camp Nou, making the score 6-5 on aggregate. “It is a difficult night to explain with words,” said outgoing Barca boss Luis Enrique.
“It was a horror movie, not a drama, with a Camp Nou that I have seen very few times as a player or coach.
“What defines this victory is the faith that the players and fans had.”
PSG coach Unai Emery accepted his side lost their composure in the closing stages as he suffered a 12th defeat in as many visits to the Camp Nou.
“The truth is we have let a huge opportunity get away and we are aware of that,” said Emery.
“In the last two minutes we lost everything we had recovered in the secondhalf. Barcelona are capable of this in their stadium. In the last few minutes they played all or nothing and they have beaten us.”
Barca also enter the record books by reaching the quarterfinals for a 10th straight season.
Enrique warned the French champions on Tuesday that his side were capable of scoring six and they needed the full 95 minutes to pull of a miracle revival. In Dortmund, a hattrick by PierreEmerick Aubameyang and Christian Pulisic’s dazzling display fired Borussia Dortmund into the quarter-finals with a 4-0 thrashing of Benfica.
The result saw Dortmund win the round-of-16 tie 4-1 on aggregate after Aubameyang’s early goal cancelled out Borussia’s 1-0 defeat in Lisbon last month.