Deportivo, AC Milan & the story of the Champions League’s greatest comeback

Football is long-established as the opium of the masses, but its best moments come when jeopardy meets scarcity.

Jeopardy is why the worst World Cup final remains engrossing, while a thrill-a-minute game in the Champions League league phase is the unsatisfying footballing equivalent of a Big Mac.

And scarcity is essential if you want emotional depth. Manchester City’s final-day comeback to win the 2022 Premier League title, their fourth under Pep Guardiola, is largely forgotten. Their 2012 success will be recalled as long as humans populate the earth.

Much of football, just like much of life, falls short on either side of the equation. This isn’t helped by the authorities’ desire to overwater the plant, saturating the market with so many matches they all blend into one.

But when the two components align? You’re in special territory. Territory that will have writers penning odes to Deportivo knocking AC Milan out of the Champions League over two decades later.

The facts remain imprinted in the memory. Trailing 4-1 from the quarter-final first leg in 2004, Depor raised their game to stratospheric levels to eliminate the holders and favourites.

And one look at that Milan team is enough to surrender yourself to an involuntary Proustian rush; Maldini, Pirlo, Shevchenko, Kaka, Seedorf, Cafu, Nesta. This was arguably the best XI in the world at the time.

“We’d won the first game 4-1 and the chances of us not going through were roughly equal to those of seeing Rino Gattuso complete an arts degree”, Pirlo wrote years later.

“We were already thinking about the semis, as if we’d got it all sewn up even before we flew to Galicia. A tailor-made walk in the park.

“We hadn’t taken into account a couple of possibilities. One, that the tailor might go mad and, two, that our own players could be struck down by collective amnesia. Every single one of them, all at the same time.”

Deportivo were underdogs, but no mugs. They’d won La Liga four years previously, had become Champions League staples and knocked out Juventus in the last 16.

The Riazor, a wonderfully atmospheric stadium near the beach, was pumped with the zeal of a crowd that had nothing to lose.

Striker Walter Pandiani had urged his team-mates to ‘play like maniacs’. Milan’s aristocrats had walked into a bullring wearing tophat and tails.

– Sunday, 7 April 2024

Within five minutes, Pandiani took advantage of slack Maldini defending to open the scoring. His hologram would later make 35 appearances for Birmingham, but the Uruguayan played like a Tasmanian Devil against Milan .

Rattled out of their usual rhythm, Carlo Ancelotti’s team were coughing up possession and giving up chances. A second was inevitable and the evergreen Juan Carlos Valeron obliged with an easy header after Dida horribly misjudged a cross.

When Albert Luque thrashed a third home before half-time, the eyes of a continent had turned to northwestern Spain. Milan’s lead had been wiped out and nothing was sacred any longer.

“What struck me most was how they kept on running at half-time,” Pirlo recalled. “To a man: no exceptions.

“When the referee, Urs Meier, blew his whistle they all shot off down the tunnel as if they were Usain Bolt.

“They couldn’t stand still even in that 15-minute period designed specifically to let you draw breath or at most just walk about.”

Pirlo’s magical feet are matched by his acidic tongue – he never accepted being outplayed by Park Ji-sung in 2010 – and he’d later suggest that Deportivo players had taken something performance-enhancing.

But the truth was they were in a once-in-a-lifetime zone where everything had aligned for them.

Some never get those opportunities; more fail to recognise them when they appear. Milan stirred briefly in the second half, but were so vulnerable as to be practically naked.

Fittingly, it was a club legend who sealed the deal. Fran played 550 games for Depor, the sole team of his 18-year career, and a lapse from the discombobulated Gattuso presented a glimpse of immortality.

His left-footed shot, aided by a deflection, nestled past Dida and capped one of the most memorable nights in European football history.

“The game turned out exactly the way I dreamed,” manager Javier Iruteta said afterwards. “It was almost mission impossible but we gave a sensational first-half display to get the three goals we needed.”

After being treated for shellshock, Ancelotti summed it up: “It really is hard to explain this defeat.”

It’s a rare sensation to watch something live and realise history is unfolding, especially when the initial situation looks so unpromising on paper.

But millions of UK viewers were treated to such an experience as the game was broadcast live on ITV, up against EastEnders. Phil Mitchell was no match for Depor wracking up the goals.

Understandably high on life, the Spaniards lost a narrow, niggly semi-final to Porto and soon slipped from the upper echelons of La Liga.

Within 20 years, Deportivo were in the labyrinth third tier of Spanish football and playing league matches against the B team of arch rivals Celta Vigo.

They’re challenging for promotion back to La Liga at the time of writing, but European nights at the Riazor are a distant dream.

Happily, Deportivo have already proven that the impossible can become reality.