Fifty years ago, in the now-defunct competition the European Cup-Winners Cup, a British team went to Lisbon to play Portugal’s Sporting. The tie became forever remembered because of confusion over the away-goals rule.
Glasgow Rangers were the visitors and finished a see-saw, 230 minutes - it went to extra-time - against Sporting with the aggregate score at 6-6. They were puzzled when, having lost the game in Portugal 4-3, the referee told them the contest needed to be settled by a penalty shoot-out.
The spot-kicks went ahead, Sporting winning them, before it was established the referee had made an embarrassing error. Rangers’ three away goals were in fact enough, under rules that had been in operation in Europe’s club football tournaments for a few years, to have taken them through. The result was reversed, the spot-kicks annulled, and the Scottish club went on to win the competition.
The away-goals rule, where, in the event of a draw over a two-legged tie, the side who has scored more away from home progresses, had been used in Uefa competitions from the mid-1960s. But, as of this week, following an overdue reform, it no longer applies in the knockout rounds of the major club competitions organised by European football’s governing body.
Part of the reason the rule has been abandoned is that the sport at elite level has altered. So-called ‘home advantage’ has reduced. Travel is easier, so away teams no longer suffer the same levels of fatigue as they used to. The standard of pitches has improved uniformly, so the same skill-sets are valid home or away. Referees, now backed up by VAR, are less open to the suspicion that they might be influenced by a partisan home crowd.
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So it was that, with away goals no more valuable than home ones for the first time in more than half a century of European Cup knockouts, Manchester City went to Lisbon 50 years after Rangers had been there. They put on an exhibition of how home advantage counts for very little. Sporting 0, City 5 set a record for efficiency on the road: no away team in the Champions League had previously led by four goals or more at half-time.
It felt like a fitting endorsement of the end of the outdated away-goals rule, not least because, in Lisbon, the crowd had been impressively loud and loyal to the home team even as Sporting were being torn apart by City.
There was rousing noise at the San Siro on Wednesday evening, too. But, by the end of the night, the well-supported home team, Internazionale, had been beaten 2-0 by Liverpool.
Having struck off their away-goals rule, Uefa are now confronted with the possibility that, rather than home advantage, a new bias is shaping their premium club competition: English advantage. This week, the holders of Portugal’s league title and Italy’s reigning champions were out-thought by the strongest two clubs in England. By the end of next week, the champions of France, Lille, and the champions of Spain, Atletico Madrid, may well have buckled under the Premier League bulldozer.
Manchester United will on Wednesday host an erratic Atletico. A day earlier, European Cup-holders Chelsea meet a Lille who are a long way shy of the pacesetting Ligue 1 season they enjoyed in 2021-21.
Inter’s head coach, Simone Inzaghi, described Liverpool as “one of the best teams in Europe.” He speaks for a consensus. City and Liverpool, first and second in the Premier League, are widely tipped to go all the way to the final unless they are drawn to meet one another before then.
They may also be encouraged by the setback encountered by the club deemed most likely to interrupt an English grand slam: Bayern Munich. The Bundesliga title-holders trailed 1-0 for 79 minutes of their first leg at RB Salzburg, who are outsiders but skilled masters at the kind of quick counter-attack that the away-goals rule used to encourage.
“We made too many mistakes,” admitted Julian Nagelsmann, the head coach of a Bayern who at the weekend lost 4-2 to unheralded Bochum. A late equaliser from Kingsley Coman at Salzburg saved them from a second upset in the space of four days, but they look more vulnerable than either City or Liverpool.
Paris Saint-Germain, 1-0 winners against Real Madrid in their last-16 first leg, might yet prove the biggest obstacle in the way of the English juggernaut. But for City and Liverpool, the European fixture they should fear most is a tie that pits them against one another.
