03/17/26 05:04:00
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03/17 17:03 CDT Champions League: Real Madrid and PSG advance to quarterfinals.
Bodo/Glimt fairytale run is over
Champions League: Real Madrid and PSG advance to quarterfinals. Bodo/Glimt
fairytale run is over
By STEVE DOUGLAS
AP Sports Writer
Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain quickly snuffed out hopes of epic comebacks
by Manchester City and Chelsea in the Champions League on Tuesday.
Instead, it was tiny Bodo/Glimt on the receiving end of a historic second-leg
fightback in the round of 16.
Protecting three-goal leads from the first leg, Madrid won 2-1 at City ---
helped by an early red card to City captain Bernardo Silva --- to advance 5-1
on aggregate and defending champion PSG scored twice in the first 14 minutes on
the way to a 3-0 victory at Chelsea. That sealed an 8-2 aggregate success.
Bodo/Glimt, the Norwegian club from a fishing town of around 55,000 people
north of the Arctic Circle, also had a 3-0 lead from the first leg but was
blown away 5-0 by Sporting Lisbon after extra time.
There's only been one bigger comeback in the Champions League: Barcelona's
storied "Remontada" against PSG in 2016-17.
Sporting's reward is a quarterfinal matchup with Arsenal, which beat Bayer
Leverkusen 2-0 for a 3-1 aggregate win and kept alive its hopes of a quadruple
of trophies this season.
Bodo/Glimt has charmed the soccer world
The Bodo/Glimt fairytale is over --- but only after an unlikely streak of wins
that has charmed the world of soccer.
After beating Man City and Atletico Madrid in the final two rounds of the
league stage to squeeze into the playoff round, the northernmost team ever to
play in the Champions League defeated Inter Milan --- last season's runner-up
--- home and away to advance to the round of 16.
Winning 3-0 in its 8,000-capacity Aspmyra stadium last week didn't prove enough
against Sporting, which dominated throughout in the return match and scored
through Gonalo Incio, Pedro Gonalves and Luis Suarez to take the game to
extra time.
There, Uruguay left back Maxi Arajo scored in the 92nd minute to put Sporting
ahead on aggregate for the first time and Rafael Nel added a fifth in stoppage
time.
"People thought it was almost impossible," Arajo said, "but we showed that we
believed in ourselves and turned it around. We played a perfect game."
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