Villarreal slay Bayern to reach Champions League semi-finals

Back in the final four for the first time since 2006

Villarreal, for the first time since 2006, are in the Champions League semi-finals. Unai Emery‘s side scored a late equaliser at Bayern Munich on Tuesday to give them a 2-1 aggregate lead that sent them past the German giants.

A 1-0 first-leg win allowed Villarreal to travel to Bavaria with a slight edge over Bayern, but there was a sense that the LaLiga Santander side might go on to regret the missed opportunities of the game in Spain, where a one-goal lead didn’t paint the whole picture of the game.

Those fears would have grown when Robert Lewandowski put Bayern ahead, but that was the hosts’ only shot on target.?Villarreal threatened first through Gerard Moreno despite Bayern having much more of the ball, but they suffered a scare when Leroy Sane picked out Joshua Kimmich only for the latter to miss his header.

As frustrations grew around the Allianz Arena, the hosts went ahead, but that was to be as good as it got for Lewandowski and his team-mates.

Villarreal continued to believe that they could be behind another giant killing, and they managed to do just that. Samuel Chukwueze stepped off the bench and ended up grabbing the tie’s winning goal, appearing in the 88th minute and just as the game looked destined to go all the way to extra time.

Villarreal, despite sitting seventh in LaLiga Santander, now await to see if Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid can join them in the semi-finals.