Atletico Madrid 2-2 Bayer Leverkusen: Breaking down the controversial end to a chaotic Champions League game

Football has been around for a long time. Well over 100 years in fact. And as such you would have thought that we would have seen everything it has to offer.

But then Atletico Madrid v Bayer Leverkusen happened.

Put aside for a moment that this was actually a cracking game of football that saw Leverkusen twice go ahead, only to get pegged back twice. Ignore that. We want to talk about the last couple of minutes.

But then Mr Turpin got a message in his ear. After a dramatic goal-line scramble in a corner just before he blew for full-time he had missed something.

So Turpin went to the screen, with both benches and players obviously losing their minds for good and for bad. As the replays flashed up on screen, it became clear that Piero Hincapie of Leverkusen had handled the ball.

As an aside the slow-motion images produced a hilarious secondary focus with goalkeeper Jan Oblak, who had come up for the corner, flailing his body into all sorts of positions to try and make contact with the ball.

Despite having ended the match, Turpin realised there should have been a penalty and blows for the spot-kick. Leading to jubilant scenes from the Atletico players, staff and fans.

Yannick Carrasco, who scored earlier, steps up with the chance to keep his team’s Champions League hopes alive.

But after all that, he misses. Leverkusen goalkeeper Lukas Hradecky stays strong and saves the relatively poor penalty.

But we’re not done! Midfielder Saul starts a few yards away from the edge of the penalty area in order to get a running start on any follow-up and he comes charging in to head the ball in. Only it doesn’t go in. It crashes off the crossbar.

But we’re still not done! Defender Reinildo gets to the loose ball first, but even he can’t score, as the ball is deflected up and over the bar and Leverkusen claim a dramatic draw, and in doing so keep their Europa League hopes alive. Atletico are on five points and Leverkusen are on four, meaning either side can finish third and go through to the Europa League.

You can watch the entire ridiculous affair in this clip below. Credit to beIN Sports for the stills and BT Sport for the video below.

And as if there wasn’t more drama. Here’s the Porto players after their game watching that chaotic end and finding out they are into the last 16! This is while they’re boarding the plane from Brugges to go back to Portugal.

Speaking after the game Oblak said: “It was a very cruel way to lose. Sorry to the fans, they deserve much more.”

Leverkusen’s Hradecky said: “The result is not progress for us. It was not our best game, but the team showed character and that moves us forward. We’ll take this as a small step in the right direction.”

Midfielder Nadiem Amiri added: “For the team spirit, that was important and right. In the end, luck was on our side and we made a lot of steps in the right direction.”