Stunning scenes at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday as Chelsea were knocked out of the Champions League on Wednesday night by ten-man Paris Saint-Germain on away goals, in an ill-tempered match.
Everything seemed to be going Chelsea’s way when Zlatan Ibrahimovic was sent off after 31 minutes, unfortunately the first of several poor decisions by referee Bjorn Kuipers.
With 60 minutes to go and needing only a scoreless draw to progress, Mourinho pulled back the reigns on his side and allowed PSG to stay in the match. And the French champions should have gone ahead when Edinson Cavani could not score from a tight angle after rounding Chelsea goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois.
The game should have been over nine minutes from the end of normal time when Gary Cahill scored from a corner. But somehow Chelsea let David Luiz get free from a corner five minutes later and this bullet header tied up the match and sent us to extra time.
When Thiago Silva inexplicably handled the ball in his penalty box, six minutes into the first period of extra time, it seemed that Chelsea were advancing to the quarter-finals when Eden Hazard cooly slotted home the penalty.
Jose Mourinho sides traditional don’t relinquish leads late in a game, but once again they were let down by slack defensing from a corner. Silva saw one header brilliantly saved by Courtois, but moments later the PSG captain scored from the resulting corner to make it 2-2 on the night and send the visitors through.
Cannot overstate what a big win this was for PSG. They are a team that has dominated French football since being bought by Qatar Sports Investments in 2012, but their Champions League performances have not lived up to their domestic ones. They are similar to Manchester City in that regard. But the win at Stamford Bridge, where they played 90 minutes with 10 men, was the kind of battling performance that European Champions put in.
As for Chelsea, this was a bitterly disappointing game. They did not play well, and their inability to handle corners has to worry Mourinho. Both PSG goals came from corners while Courtois was forced to make a great save from another corner. And last month Chelsea let another lead at home slip away as Burnley scored from a corner to salvage a 1-1 draw at the Bridge too.
Bayern win big
Thomas Muller scored twice as Bayern Munich took advantage of an early red card to hammer Shakhtar Donetsk 7-0 and sail into the quarter-finals of the Champions League.
Muller opened the scoring with a fourth minute penalty after Oleksandr Kucher brought down Mario Gotze in the box and was sent off.
And by the time the striker had added his second and Bayern’s fourth in the 51th minute, Shakhtar’s hopes of building on a creditable goalless draw in the first leg had long disappeared.
Holger Badstuber made it 5-0 to Bayern on the night with a powerful header from a Rafinha cross, then Robert Lewandowski made it six in the 75th minute.
Having won the penalty which began the rout, Gotze rounded the evening off by striking Bayern’s seventh and final goal three minutes before full-time.
