Bayer Leverkusen showed real fight to keep their hopes of progressing to the knock-out stages of the Champions League alive. In their 4-4 draw with the three times Italian champions, Leverkusen went into a 2-0 lead early on, before coming back from 4-2 down in the second half. In the reverse fixture in the holy city on the 4th November, Leverkusen could move up to second place in Group E behind strong favourites Barcelona.
In front of 29,412 spectators, Bayer Leverkusen got off to a great start and found themselves 2 goals to the good thanks to an early brace from Javier Hernandez. After about half an hour, the Werkself’s start looked to have fallen apart completely as Daniele De Rossi responded with a brace of his own to make it 2-2 before half time. Miralem Pjanic and super sub Iago Falque gave the visitors a 4-2 lead after 73 minutes before Kevin Kampl and Admir Mehmedi both scored in the last ten minutes to earn Leverkusen a well-deserved point.
The home team started well against Leverkusen sporting director Rudi Völler’s former club, where he was both player and manager. Hernandez showed composure to convert a penalty after a handball in the area early on, scoring his second of the competition so far.
Chicarito’s second strike
In the 19th minute, Chicarito had another surprise in store for Roma. Hakan Calhanoglu, who also played a vital part in the build up to the first goal, played a killer pass to Hernandez, whose initial shot was saved, but he beat Wojciech Szczesny with the second attempt.
However, instead of continuing to play confidently and act boldly as they did in the first third, Leverkusen seemed to be happy with their comfortable 2-0 lead, and allowed Roma to have more and more chances. De Rossi halved the deficit after a corner fell to his feet kindly in the box, and scored again to equalise, and score his first ever Champions League brace, after a Miralem Pjanic free kick as Ömer Toprak lost sight of his man in the box.
Roma concede two late goals despite dominating
After the interval, Roma took charge of the game. Bayer only managed to counter up the pitch into the away side’s half a few times, and in comparison to the opening half an hour, were nervous and lacked concentration up front. Just a few minutes in to the second half, Bernd Leno prevented a free kick from Pjanic making it 3-2, before he saved a good Gervinho chance to keep the scores level. He was, however, helpless to a Pjanic free kick in the 55th minute, and could only watch it hit the back of the net as the Bosnian curled it into the top corner from 25 yards.
Leverkusen looked to be broken as one bad pass followed the next. In the closing stages, Falque doubled the Roma lead, but just as it looked all over, Bayer fought back. A screamer curled into the top corner from Kevin Kampl gave the home team hope, and Mehmedi scored in injury time to make the seemingly impossible happen, leaving the scores at 4-4 when the final whistle blew.