After qualifying against FC Barcelona (6-4 cumulative score), Paris Saint-Germain healed some wounds a little more. Two of them notably depicted the faces of Marcus Rashford and Demba Ba. Executioners of the capital club in the round of 16 of the Champions League, one with Manchester United in 2019 (0-2, 1-3), the other with Chelsea in 2014 (3-1, 2-0) , the two attackers respectively managed to punish and eliminate Paris in the final moments of their meeting. Without winning on the cumulative score in the double confrontation.
The fault lies with a certain away goal rule published in 1965 by UEFA: goals scored away count double. A point of regulation which largely pushed the home teams in fear of conceding a dramatic goal on their lawn and which, sometimes, tended to close the matches. In 2021, UEFA abolished it, justifying that this rule dissuaded home teams from attacking “because they fear conceding a goal which would give their opponents a crucial advantage”.
The explosion of joy from Demba Ba who qualified Chelsea against PSG in the quarter-finals of the 2013/2014 Champions League. Still, the aggregate score was 3-3.
Prolific quarter-finals
This season, the quarter-finals of the Champions League were particularly hectic. And that's to say: 32 times the nets will have shaken in the space of 8 matches with an average of 4 goals per match. Enough to break a two-decade-old record with the 2003/2004 edition and its 30 achievements at the same stage of the competition, which was also contested by Lyon and Monaco. A statistic which legitimately allows us to ask the question: has the reform of the away goal really changed the situation?
At a time when a 0-0 became perfectly admissible at home in C1, UEFA precisely hoped, by withdrawing its credo, to disinhibit the attacks of the receiving teams and intensify the spectacle. And these quarter-finals perhaps showed a certain efficiency of this decision. 18 goals in the first leg, 14 in the return, the scores flew on the scoreboards and the defenses lost time and again.
However, coming to this conclusion so simply would be easy. Since the removal of the rule from the 2021-2022 financial year, the average is 25 goals for the quarter-finals, while the three editions preceding this innovation had 23 goals on average at this stage. Too slight an increase which may suggest that this year is nothing more than a singularity, and that the abolition of the said rule is plausibly only insignificant in the new record broken by the eight teams entered.
More frequent penalty shootouts
Another factor revised with the removal of the away goal rule, penalty shootouts seem to be making a comeback this season in C1 after 8 years of absence and a final won by Real Madrid against Atlético in 2016 (1-1, 5 tab to 3). On this edition, observers have already been able to observe three in the same final phase between Arsenal and Porto (1-1, 4 tab to 2), Atlético Madrid and Inter Milan (2-2, 3 tab to 2 ) as well as Manchester City and Real Madrid (4-4, 3 tab to 4). A statistic worth highlighting since this had only happened twice before, in 2012 and 2008, and which definitely makes this European exercise a pleasant “anomaly”.