APOEL score three stoppage-time goals to knock out Rosenborg

What is the sweetest way to reach the next round of the Champions League? The dramatic one. Something extraordinary happened in the 3^rd qualifying round of the most prestigious European club competition, and it raised a simple question: how many goals can a team score in added time?

APOEL Nicosia pulled off a miracle in the second leg of their 3^rd qualifying round tie in the Champions League against Rosenborg of Norway. The Norwegian side had won the first leg 2-1, so the Cypriots needed a victory at home to progress to the next round.

The home team started very well, but missed lots of chances in front of Rosenborg’s goal and even hit the bar twice. It looked as though the Norwegian side would take their place in the next round of the tournament.

Then came the answer to the question of how many goals a team can score in added time. The fourth official signalled six minutes of added time. APOEL began crossing the ball into the Rosenborg penalty area and found the net in the 92^nd minute to make it 1-0, with Giannis Gianniotas the scorer. That was not enough for the Cypriots. Just four minutes later, the Brazilian Vander added the second goal for APOEL. Not content with the score, the home side launched one more attack, and Tomas De Vincenti took advantage of a mistake by the Rosenborg goalkeeper to tuck the ball away for a classic 3-0 in APOEL’s favour. That was the last goal of the game, scored in the 98^th minute, two minutes after the signalled added time had ended.

There were plenty of other interesting matches on Tuesday. The Bulgarian champions Ludogorets Razgrad, for example, beat Crvena Zvezda of Serbia 4-2 after extra time. It is a rare case for both legs of a tie to finish 2-2.

A team needs about seven seconds to build a dangerous attack that can lead to a goal. Seen that way, it is less of a surprise that APOEL scored three goals in added time of their most important match of the season.

The tie in numbers

The first leg had been played at the Lerkendal Stadion in Trondheim on 27 July 2016. Christian Gytkjær put Rosenborg ahead in the 23rd minute, Jørgen Skjelvik added a second just before half-time, and Georgios Efrem’s goal in the 67th minute gave APOEL the away goal that kept the tie alive. The return leg was played at the GSP Stadium in Nicosia on 2 August 2016, and the 3-0 home win turned a 2-1 deficit into a 3-2 aggregate victory. Not one of APOEL’s goals came inside the regulation 90 minutes.

How APOEL’s season ended

The comeback did not take the Cypriots into the group stage. In the play-off round APOEL were drawn against FC Copenhagen and lost the first leg 1-0 in Denmark on 16 August 2016, with Andrija Pavlović scoring before half-time. In the return leg on 24 August, Pieros Sotiriou equalised in the 69th minute, but Federico Santander scored for Copenhagen four minutes from time, and APOEL went out 2-1 on aggregate.

Dropping into the Europa League proved a happy outcome for Thomas Christiansen’s side. APOEL topped Group B ahead of Olympiacos, Young Boys and Astana with 12 points, a record for the club and for Cypriot football, and then knocked out Athletic Bilbao 4-3 on aggregate in the round of 32, losing 3-2 in Bilbao before winning 2-0 at home. Anderlecht ended the run in the round of 16 with a 1-0 win in each leg. At home, APOEL won the 2016-17 Cypriot First Division, their 26th league title and fifth in a row, sealed with a 3-1 win over Omonia on 13 May 2017.

Ludogorets and the group stage

Ludogorets, the other side whose tie went to extra time that night, had drawn the first leg 2-2 in Razgrad and won 4-2 in Belgrade to go through 6-4 on aggregate. They also cleared the play-off round, beating Viktoria Plzeň 2-0 in Sofia and drawing 2-2 in the Czech Republic. In Group A they faced Arsenal, Paris Saint-Germain and Basel, collected three points from three draws and finished third, which sent them into the Europa League, where Copenhagen eliminated them 2-1 on aggregate in the round of 32.