Manchester: Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain quickly snuffed out hopes of epic comebacks by Manchester City and Chelsea in the Champions League.
Instead, it was tiny Bodø/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 — through two goals from Vinícius Júnior to advance 5-1 on aggregate and defending champions 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.
Bodø/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, who beat Bayer Leverkusen 2-0 for a 3-1 aggregate win.