After the UCL Round of 16 action kicked off on Tuesday, 2 more games were played as Porto faced a daunting task of upsetting Cristiano Ronaldo's Juventus whereas two underperforming sides this season according to their standards, Sevilla and Borussia Dortmund locked horns in Spain.
First we look back in Portugal as Porto shocked the world when they won 2-1 against Juventus. It has not been the season like they would have hoped for as Juventus found themselves struggling in the league, perhaps signalling the end of their dominace in Italian Football.
They conceded within 63 seconds of the first half as Mehdi Taremi pounced on an early mistake by Defender Bentancur who tried to play it out back to his keeper Szczesny. In that attempt his pass failed to generate any sort of power. Taremi dived in and prodded the ball over the keeper to surprisingly make it 1-0.
At half time, Juventus would have hoped for an improvement in their performance. They unfortunately did the exact opposite. Mere 19 seconds into the second half,saw them trailing 2-0 down Moussa Marega as lighting strucked twice for Porto.
Marega latched onto a pass from Wilson Munafa. He took a touch and then slotted it's past Szczesny in the bottom left hand corner to bring jubilee scenes for the host.
Juventus kept on trying till the end and were lucky enough to get a goal back in the 82nd minute when Federico Chiesa prodded the ball in the bottom left corner from a right footed effort which caught the goalkeeper Agustin Marchesin Completed off footed. Porto now head to Turin with a one goal lead. Juventus will need to perform much better than they did if they were to survive another RO16 exit.
Meanwhile in Spain, there was a 5 goal thriller between Sevilla and Borussia Dortmund as the German Outfit won 3-2. Despite going behind early, they found themselves 3-1 at Half time. A second half goal from Sevilla then made it 3-2 and has now put this tie right in the balance.
Sevilla took the lead in the 7th minute when Suso tried to drill a shot at the goal. It took a deflection of Matt Hummels which left the goalkeeper Marwin Hitz with no choice and found its way in.
After Kylian Mbappe's sensational performance against FC Barcelona on Tuesday, another generational talent Erling Braut Haaland took it up to himself to help his team. He assisted Mahmoud Dahoud and scored twice himself just before half time.
Sevilla got the second goal in the form of a volley by Luuk De Jong, who lifted his volley in the far corner of the net in the 84th minute. There was a late shout for a penalty in injury time for Sevilla which was turned down by the referee. However VAR did pause the game and took a look at the incident and saw nothing wrong and the decision of No Penalty stood.
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