The main sensation of this edition of the Champions League, Bodø/Glimt missed the chance to repeat the best campaign by a Norwegian club in the tournament. After beating Sporting 3-0 in the first leg, as hosts, the yellow team was defeated by the same score in the regular time of the second leg and saw the Portuguese team seek an unlikely qualification to the quarter-finals in extra time.
In Lisbon, the game ended 5-0, leaving the aggregate score 5-3 for the Portuguese team.
The score began to take shape in the 34th minute of the first half, when Gonçalo Inácio opened the scoring. After the break, Pedro Gonçalves, at 16, and Luis Suárez, at 33, expanded. In extra time, Maximiliano Araújo, just 2 minutes into extra time, scored the goal that took Sporting to the quarterfinals. In extra time, Rafael Nel sealed the classification.
More accustomed to the European scene and with a greater tradition in the tournament, Sporting still entered the field under pressure from the elastic setback in the first leg, a disadvantage that historically tends to be difficult to reverse in Champions League knockout stages. Even so, the team managed to impose pace from the start, took the decision to extra time and completed the comeback.
Eliminated in the round of 16, the Norwegian team was unable to repeat the best campaign of a club from their country in the competition. After passing giants in the previous stages, such as Inter Milan in the playoffs, the club dreamed of at least equaling Rosenborg’s campaign, which reached the quarter-finals in the 1996/1997 edition.
