The Greatest Football Matches Of All Time
Football, also known as soccer, is the most popular sport in the world which attracts a lot of attention of people watching at each international league, from the rich to the poor. The football history has witnessed so many classic matches between well-known soccer teams. However, the football matches mentioned below are among the greatest ones of all time, leaving lots of good impression on people all over the world.
Manchester United vs Bayern Munich 2-1 ( 1999 UEFA CL Final)
The 1999 UEFA Champion League Final was a soccer match between Manchester United of England and Bayern Munich of Germany. The match was played at Camp Nou in Barcelona, Spain on May 26th twenty years ago. Both teams came to Barcelona with a big ambition of winning the most prestigious silverware to their Treble bid. Before that, Bayern had won the Group D in the group stage and Manchester United had been one of the two best runners-up across all six groups.
The football match attracted thousands of people all over the globe at that time
Just in 6 minutes from the beginning of the game, Mario Blaster scored the first goal for Bayern thanks to his low free kick around the United wall. The Red Devils then began to fail at finding their rhythm because of not having influential midfielders Paul Scholes and Roy Keane in their team that day. Not surprisingly, Bayern started to look increasingly dangerous on the counter-attack and dominate the possession.
Seeing that situation, Sir Alex Ferguson, the manager of Manchester United, decided to bring on Teddy Sheringham and Ole Solksjaer into the ground. From that moment, the Red Devils seemed to gain their confidence and fought back the rivalry quickly. They had the score 1-1 thanks to Teddy Sheringham and won the trophy after Ole Solksjaer had had a strike into Bayern wall in some few minutes in the injury time.
The two late strikes in stoppage time of Manchester United made all the audiences stunned in disbelief trying to realize what had just hit them
The game’s ending was so unexpected for everyone at that time as Bayern Munich was really close to the trophy but it turned out MU won it. Thanks to this, Manchester United became the first team to win the European Cup or Champions League without being champions of Europe. The climax of the game was also voted as the fourth-greatest sporting moment ever by Channel 4 viewers in a 2002 poll.
The greatest football rivalries
Liverpool vs AC Milan 3-3 ( 2005 UEFA CL Final)
The 2005 UEFA Champion League Final was the final match of 2004-05 UEFA Champions League, Europe’s primary club football competition. The teams played at that game were Liverpool of England and Milan of Italy. The match took place at the Ataturk Stadium in Istanbul, Turkey on May 25th, 2005. The team players, Liverpool and AC Milan, were so strong that both of them had won the competition many times before.
The world calls the match as “ The Istanbul Miracle”on account of its greatness
In the first minute of the match, Milan captain Paolo Maldini scored a free kick into goalkeeper Dudek’s wall of Liverpool, which made Maldini the oldest scorer in the history of the competition. Afterwards, people saw an insurmountable 3-0 lead for the Rossoneri at halftime with the two scores belong to Hernan Crespo.
Greatest football players of all time
However, Liverpool changed the formation from 4-4-1-1 to a 3-5-2 and replaced Steve Finnan by Dietmar Hamann. Not long after that, Liverpool luckily scored through captain Steven Gerrard. Vladimir Smicer fired a powerful low shot past Dida to bring the score at 2-3. Last but not least, Xabi Alonso scored from the rebound to equalise for Liverpool.
Liverpool had 3 scores in such a short time in the second half and brought the victory to its team in pride
The equalization of the match led the teams to the extra time but there was no change at the results, they had to go to a penalty shoot-out. Unluckily, a mistake of Andriy Shevchenko from AC Milan made this team miss their chance to receive the crown, which meant Liverpool won the penalty shootout by a score of 3-2 and became the champion of the league.
This was regarded as the greatest match in the C1 Cup history, “ a miracle night” in Istanbul
Liverpool vs Chelsea 4-4 (2008-09 UEFA CL 2nd Leg)
The knockout phase of the 2009-09 UEFA Champions League began in 2009 with the participation of 16 teams. There were four first-leg ties and four second leg ties. In the latter one, there was one of the greatest match between Liverpool of England and Chelsea of England,too. They were known as Reds and Blues and had faced each other 24 times in the five years leading up to this tie.
Both teams were so strong and they showed their strength to the audience during the match
Knowing that Chelsea had led 3-1 from the first leg at Anfield, Liverpool themselves had to score 3 times to have a chance to win this competition. First of all, Fabio Aurelio of Liverpool made a surprise for Cech by a 35-yard wide free kick. At the 28th minute, Xabi Alonso continued to help the team closer to the dream of winning by doubling the lead. This made Chelsea a little bit nervous at the first half.
Both of the teams played very well during the match with an aim to bringing the trophy for their team
After the break, Chelsea put on energy to try their best, which helped them have 2 strikes in 6 minutes ( 51st and 57th minute of the game). The players bringing up those scores were Didier Drogba and Alex Rodrigo Dias da Costa. Around 20 minutes afterwards, Lampard continued to score 1 point for Chelsea.
Not giving up, Liverpool scored 2 times at 81st and 83rd minute thanks to Lucas and Kuyt while there was 1 score of Chelsea at the last minute of the game from Lampard. Finally, Chelsea got a 7-5 edge on aggregate to advance to the Champions League semifinal with happiness.
This football match was so great that football fans still remember every second until now
The victory of the match lies on the enthusiasm of both teams and the support from the audience. If they were not good enough, they could not create such an amazing match like this. Liverpool and Chelsea tried their best to gain success for their teams. The Reds and Blues are still classic teams in the world until now. People cannot deny their huge number of scores and cups at every season. Today, they also face each other so many times but the match people often talk about is the one in 2008-09 UEFA CL 2nd Leg.
To sum up, the football matches mentioned above deserve to be among the greatest ones in the history of the football world. They were played by really strong teams with talented footballers. Thus, the victories of those games will definitely be told and repeated again and again to the next generations all over the world.
Greatest football players of all time
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