KEEPERS were the pantomime villains in their nine-goal thriller between Barcelona and Benfica.
The European giants went head-to-head in their penultimate matches of the Champions League stage of the season, as the Catalan club scored THREE goals in the last 20 minutes to win 5-4.
Wojciech Szczesny came out of retirement in October to strike a deal with Barcelona amid their goalkeeping crisis, but manager Hansi Flick may have felt his side would have been better served without the Poland international.
The former Arsenal and Juventus shot-stopper had a disastrous first half between the sticks as he dropped two clangers and was gifted a first-half hat-trick by Vangelis Pavlidis.
There was nothing Szczesny could have done about Pavlidis' opener, but his second and third were almost entirely down to the Pole.
Just nine minutes after Robert Lewandowski had made the score 1–1 for Barcelona, Szczesny inexplicably burst out of his area to greet a “loose” ball played over the top by Nicolas Otamendi.
Instead, he clumsily crashed into his own defender Alejandro Balde, completely wiping out the left-back and allowing Pavlidis to score the easiest goal ever as he raced through an open net.
The third was just as much Szczesny's fault as he charged off his line again, this time sliding at the feet of Benfica winger Karem Akturkoglu and bringing him to the ground inside the penalty area for an unmistakable penalty.
Pavlidis converted the penalty and Benfica were 3-1 within 30 minutes.
But it didn't stop there: in the second half there were more goals, drama… and goalkeeper howls.
In fact, Benfica goalkeeper Antoliy Trubin made perhaps the biggest goalkeeping mistake of the match after the break.
Trubin tried to clear the ball from his own penalty area after making a save from a long-range Gavi effort, but got the whole thing horribly wrong.
The Ukrainian goalkeeper shot his ball straight into the head of Barca's Raphinha and saw the ball bounce off the Brazilian's head and into the back of the net.
Trubin could have tried that a hundred more times and wouldn't have hit him, but the bizarre moment gave Barcelona a way back into the match and left TNT Sports commentator Ian Darke asking: “Have you ever seen a goal like that?”
Despite Benfica managing to go the other way and forcing an own goal from Ronald Araujo just four minutes later to make it 4-2, Barcelona's strange goal had given them a spark to fight back into the match .
Goals from Lewandowski, Raphinha and Eric Garcia did just that as the Spanish giants turned it around and scored their winner in the 96th minute of the match.
All in, the match saw three penalties, nine goals, an own goal, three disastrous goalkeeping errors, six bookings, a hat-trick hero and ended with Barcelona sealing their place in the next round of the competition.
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