Five second leg comebacks in Europe which prove Barcelona, Arsenal still have hope
I’ll be brutally honest, if you are an Arsenal fan or a Barcelona fan, it has been a couple of days you would rather forget. But, as things are, you can only look ahead into the future and in the future, there is the second leg.
The UEFA Champions League has been the breeding ground for meteoric comebacks, most famously Manchester United at Nou Camp and Liverpool at Istanbul. But, we often tend to ignore big comebacks in the knockout stages of the competition.
To be honest, the romance associated with European football is associated with the knockout stages, mythical stadiums and football under the lights. Just one warning before you fill yourselves with hope, my job is to give hope, and it’s the players who turn up on the field and play.
On that note, take a look at five of the best comebacks in the Champions League.
#1 UEFA Cup Second Round, Queens Park Rangers vs Partizan 1984
First Leg: Queens Park Rangers 6-2 Partizan
Yes, Queens Park Rangers did play in Europe. Interestingly, they played their home games in Highbury as their home ground Loftus Road had an artificial pitch. Queens Park ran out 6-2 winners in the game which put them in pole position to make it through to the next round.
Second Leg: Partizan 4-0 Queens Park Rangers
QPR went into the second leg full of confidence, but the Yugoslavians weren’t ones to give up. The Rangers started the game poorly, as Dragan Mance, Dragan Kalianin, Miodrag Ješi and Zvonko Ivkovi scored for the Serbians. QPR midfielder Gary Waddock recalled the events of that night (not so fondly, I would say), “We got battered on the night. We thought we had a big enough lead to get through. We prepared properly, but the result shows what can happen if you get off to a bad start in the return leg in European football”.