Juventus — and Cristiano Ronaldo — on Tuesday crashed out of the UEFA Champions League round-of-16 on away goals for the second successive year as the Bianconeri were eliminated by 10-man Porto.
Sergio Oliveira scored in extra-time to send Porto to the quarter-finals of Europe’s premier club competition, despite a thrilling 3-2 loss in Turin after Federico Chiesa’s two goals had given Juventus hope.
Porto, who played most of the second leg at a numerical disadvantage after Mehdi Taremi’s sending off, advanced on away goals after the tie ended 4-4 on aggregate.
Photo: AP
“There’s great disappointment and sadness, I’m pretty much speechless,” Chiesa said. “We managed to get back into the match and we deserved to go through. Instead, we’re here talking about something else and I really don’t know what to say.”
“We had all the cards in our hand to go through, just we didn’t show it. We only performed in the second half today and we almost did it ... the disappointment is so great. It’s all pretty much meaningless, even my two goals or my performance, because we haven’t got anything out of it,” he said.
Juventus went out in the round-of-16 on away goals to Olympique Lyonnais last season.
Photo: AP
Oliveira also netted Porto’s first goal, from the penalty spot, but Chiesa scored twice in the second half to level the tie for Juventus and send the match into extra-time.
Porto appeared to have all but won it before Adrien Rabiot reduced the deficit three minutes from time to set up a tense finale.
Both sides also hit the woodwork in an end-to-end match in which the momentum kept changing.
“These games are marked in the history of the club,” Porto coach Sergio Conceicao said. “I have a group of brave players who interpreted what we wanted in the best way, against a great team with players of a very high level.”
“After Taremi’s sending off, we showed the Porto DNA. We never stopped believing — this is the true DNA of Porto,” he said.
Juventus needed to overturn a 2-1 deficit from the first leg. They had conceded early in Portugal and almost did so again in Turin as Taremi’s header bounced off the bar in the sixth minute after Bianconeri defender Leonardo Bonucci had blocked Zaidu Sanusi’s effort.
Taremi was also involved in Porto’s goal as he won the penalty when he was fouled by Merih Demiral and Oliveira converted into the bottom-left corner.
Juventus appeared transformed after the break and drew level four minutes into the second half as Ronaldo controlled a Bonucci ball over the top and knocked it on for Chiesa to curl into the top-right corner.
Juve’s hopes of turning the tie around grew further five minutes later, when Taremi was sent off after he kicked a ball away and received a second yellow card moments after his first booking.
Chiesa hit the post before completing the comeback when he headed a Juan Cuadrado cross into the top-left corner in the 63rd minute.
Juve almost won it in stoppage-time as Alvaro Morata had a goal disallowed for offside before Cuadrado fired an effort off the bar.
The Bianconeri were made to regret those wasted chances as, five minutes from the end of extra-time, Weston McKennie fouled Oliveira, who dusted himself off to fire a free-kick under the wall and into the bottom-left corner.
Rabiot was partly to blame, although he came close to atoning for his error by heading in a corner two minutes later.
DORTMUND V SEVILLA
Reuters, DORTMUND, Germany
Borussia Dortmund striker Erling Haaland on Tuesday became the fastest player to reach 20 goals in the UEFA Champions League, as well as the youngest, after scoring twice against Sevilla.
Haaland’s goals helped Dortmund secure a 2-2 draw in their second leg that sent them into the quarter-finals 5-4 on aggregate.
The 20-year-old Norwegian has been sensational, needing just 14 matches to reach the 20-goal mark, with 10 fewer appearances than the previous record holder, Tottenham Hotspur’s Harry Kane.
He is also more than a year younger than Paris Saint-Germain’s Kylian Mbappe when he reached that mark just short of his 22nd birthday.
Haaland has netted 10 times in six Champions League games this season.
For Dortmund the aggregate win secured their first quarter-final spot in four years, with Haaland hungry for more goals.
“It was a hard game — I’m tired now, but to be in the next round feels very big. It was a crazy game and a crazy win,” Haaland said.
“We knew that they were going to come at us very hard, but when we scored they needed three — to be 1-0 up at halftime was very good and it was a nice goal,” he said.
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