There was one word on the minds of Real Madrid’s players and staff after their thrashing by Arsenal in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final at the Emirates. Could they produce a ‘remontada’ — ‘comeback’ in Spanish — at the Bernabeu?
“Of course we can,” Kylian Mbappe told reporters as he passed through the Emirates’ mixed zone following the 3-0 loss.
“Nobody will say we’re not capable of bouncing back,” wrote goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois on social media.
Speaking in his pre-match press conference on Tuesday before the return leg in Madrid, Jude Bellingham repeated those sentiments. “Remontada… honestly, I’ve heard it a million times this week. I’ve seen a lot of videos on social media, and I’ve also heard it from you, the press. It’s a night tailor-made for Madrid”
“It’s been an unbelievable environment in the last few days. (The first leg) was one of the worst results we could imagine and now everyone is waiting for the comeback.
“Thinking (about a ‘Remontada’ straight) after the (first) game is complicated because you have that difficult moment, analysing what you haven’t done well. But as you talk about it and you see the confidence, you get into all that.
“We have had previous experiences. These feelings are contagious. It was almost immediate, on the bus, even though we weren’t like we are now.”
As Ancelotti says, Madrid have form for this. Their 2021-22 Champions League title became known as ‘La Champions de las remontadas’ after fightbacks against Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea and Manchester City en route to lifting their 14th title. Ancelotti’s team were on their way out of the competition late in last season’s semi-final against Bayern Munich when 88th and 91st-minute goals by substitute Joselu sent them to Wembley and towards a record-extending 15th title.
And as we saw on Tuesday night, Borussia Dortmund and Aston Villa — who were both well-beaten in the first legs of their quarter-finals — came close to staging comebacks and knocking out Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain respectively.
Overturning a deficit of three goals or more after the first leg of a two-legged Champions League (formerly European Cup) tie is not unheard of — not including preliminary rounds, it has been done 12 times since the competition was established in 1955. Here, we look at the most memorable of those comebacks.
Real Madrid vs Derby County — round of 16, 1975-76
This game, the only time Real Madrid have overturned a three-goal deficit in a European Cup knockout tie, could inspire Ancelotti’s side.
A hat-trick from Arsenal legend Charlie George helped English champions Derby County to a 4-1 win at home at the Baseball Ground in October 1975, but it was a different story at a packed Bernabeu the following month. Argentine-born Spain forward Roberto Martinez scored twice and Santillana made it 3-0 to level the tie and put Madrid ahead on away goals (from 1965-2021, goals scored away from home in European knockout ties counted double in the case of an aggregate draw).
An effort from distance from George in the 62nd minute put Madrid on the ropes again — but an 83rd-minute penalty from Madrid icon Pirri forced extra time. In the 99th minute, Santillana lifted the ball over Derby’s Henry Newton and fired home with his left to give the Bernabeu its first great comeback in the club’s favourite competition.
“Today we talk about the spirit of Juanito (a legendary former Madrid player used to invoke comebacks),” wrote the veteran Spanish sports journalist Alfredo Relano in a 2015 article for the newspaper El Pais, “but that was born on the day of the Derby match.”
Barcelona vs Goteborg — semi-finals, 1985-86
Long before their ‘Remontada’ against Paris Saint-Germain, Barcelona had already produced a memorable European comeback with even higher stakes.
Aiming to lift their first European Cup, a Barca side managed by future England coach Terry Venables suffered a 3-0 defeat against Swedish side Goteborg in the first leg of their semi-final in April 1986.
Backup striker Angel ‘Pichi’ Alonso was the unexpected hero at the Camp Nou two weeks later, scoring a hat-trick to force extra time. Barca held on for penalties, where goalkeeper Javier Urruti saved one, scored one and watched another effort sail over, sending the Catalans to the final in Seville.
It was a cruel twist that Barca should lose that game against Romania’s Steaua Bucharest on penalties, but the comeback against Goteborg still sticks in the club’s memory.
“The most notorious (comeback) was the one against PSG in 2017,” Alonso told Panenka magazine in 2023, “but the most important for the club was our one.”
Werder Bremen vs Berliner FC Dynamo — first round, 1988-89
A tie between West and East German sides was always likely to be dramatic, and so it proved when Werder Bremen faced East Berlin’s BFC Dynamo two years before reunification.
BFC, the East German champions known for links to the Stasi secret police, beat Otto Rehhagel’s Bundesliga holders Werder 3-0 in the first leg but lost their poise in the return game a month later. A shopping trip for BFC players on the day of the match arranged by Werder sporting director Willi Lemke helped, with midfielder Thomas Doll later telling German outlet NDR, “We were more concerned about our electronics than about the game”.
Werder thrashed BFC 5-0. They levelled the tie with three goals in just over an hour, before 71st and 90-minute efforts from Manfred Burgsmuller and Thomas Schaaf put the West Germans out of sight. Few European comebacks have taken place in such a politically charged context.
Deportivo La Coruna vs Milan — quarter-finals, 2003-04
Deportivo had few hopes of reaching the semi-finals after losing 4-1 to defending champions Milan — whose team included stars such as Clarence Seedorf, Andrea Pirlo, Paolo Maldini, Cafu and Kaka — at San Siro in March 2004.
“You come out with your morale on the floor,” Deportivo’s legendary midfielder Fran tells The Athletic. “We didn’t see ourselves as capable of getting through that knockout tie because we were facing a team full of stars. The possibility of a comeback was unthinkable.”
Even so, Deportivo, who had won La Liga in 2000, knew they could give any team a fight at their Riazor stadium. Walter Pandiani struck in the fifth minute, before further first-half goals from Juan Carlos Valeron and Albert Luque gave the Spanish side the advantage on away goals.
“There was an excess of confidence from Milan. They were already thinking about the next knockout game rather than the match,” says Fran.
“It wasn’t just that they thought they had won the tie, but because Real Madrid lost the night before (against Monaco), they thought they were going to win the Champions League,” says Deportivo’s former president Augusto Cesar Lendoiro.
“They announced to us after Madrid’s defeat, at a dinner, that they were going to Porto to see the training camps ready to face them in the next round (Porto were 2-0 up from their first leg against Lyon and progressed 4-2 on the same night as the second leg of Deportivo-Milan).”
Deportivo’s players used the atmosphere at Riazor to their advantage. “You come out switched on thanks to that atmosphere,” Fran says. “You find yourselves one, two, three goals up, they’re overwhelmed and when they realise, they’re not capable of turning things around.”
Fran came on as a 66th-minute substitute and put the tie beyond Milan with his deflected effort 10 minutes later to seal a 4-0 victory on the night and a 5-4 win on aggregate.
“I think of a goal and that one always comes to mind,” adds Fran. “It was incredible, spectacular. It was a very hard moment in my career: I was experiencing my last seasons at Depor, I knew there wasn’t long left. You savour games of that level even more. You only have to see the images (of the celebration), I’ve got them (in his head) as if I were seeing them now.”
Roma vs Barcelona— quarter-finals, 2017-18
“Roma have risen from their ruins! Manolas, the Greek god in Rome! The unthinkable unfolds before our eyes!”
The hyperbole from BT Sport commentator Peter Drury was justifiable. Few gave Roma a chance of progressing to the semi-finals after Barcelona had thrashed them 4-1 at the Camp Nou, where Gerard Pique and Luis Suarez added to own-goals from Daniele De Rossi and Kostas Manolas.
But Edin Dzeko’s consolation goal on the night proved crucial — the former Manchester City striker scored again in the sixth minute of the return leg, De Rossi made amends for his own-goal with his 58th-minute penalty, and Manolas’ glancing header in the 82nd minute made it 4-4 on aggregate to put Roma through on away goals.
Liverpool vs Barcelona — semi-finals, 2018-19
A year on from their collapse against Roma, Barcelona were once again on the wrong end of a European comeback.
Barca beat Liverpool 3-0 at the Camp Nou — as Messi scored his 600th goal for the club with a sensational free kick. But they were left to rue a late scuffed chance by Ousmane Dembele, which would have made Liverpool’s task in the return leg greater.
A pre-game speech from Jurgen Klopp “changed everything”, according to midfielder Jordan Henderson in a 2019 interview with the Daily Mail.
“We had a meeting at Hope Street Hotel, the base we use before every home game, and he said to us: ‘What we need to do tonight I would say is impossible, but because it is you, there is a chance’,” Henderson said.
A raucous Anfield and an inspired group of players did the rest. Backup striker Divock Origi scored in the seventh minute, Georginio Wijnaldum produced a quickfire double, and then came that 79th-minute goal from Origi after Trent Alexander-Arnold’s clever thinking from a corner.
Liverpool went through with a 4-0 win on the night and went on to lift a sixth European Cup against Tottenham Hotspur in Madrid.
Barcelona vs Paris Saint-Germain— round of 16, 2016-17
Known as ‘La Remontada’ — the comeback — this is the only time a team in the history of the European Cup has overturned a four-goal deficit from the first leg of a knockout tie.
After losing 4-0 at the Parc des Princes, Barcelona made an impressive start at the Camp Nou. Luis Suarez scored within three minutes, Layvin Kurzawa’s own goal gave them further hope, and Messi’s 50th-minute penalty ensured they were within touching distance of levelling the tie.
But when Edinson Cavani slammed home in the 62nd minute, Barca needed to score three goals in less than 30 minutes to avoid PSG going through on away goals.
In the 88th minute, Neymar took matters into his own hands with a fine free kick, before scoring a penalty won by Suarez three minutes later. In the last minute of stoppage time, Neymar lofted the ball into the box for right-back Sergi Roberto to complete the craziest comeback ever seen in European football.
“I remember we were already desperate. Before Neymar’s goals, it seemed impossible,” Roberto, who now plays for Italian side Como, told The Athletic last year.
“But I saw that we would have one last chance and I went towards the back post. For a moment, I thought the ball wouldn’t reach me because Gerard (Pique) had stretched out his arm. But finally it fell and I managed to touch it. From then on, it was absolute madness.”
(Top photo: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
