MANCHESTER, England, April 11, 2018 -- Three points on a remarkable Tuesday night at the Etihad as Liverpool won 2-1 (5-1 on aggregate) in the Champions League quarterfinal second leg. Liverpool booked their first Champions League semifinal in 10 years as Pep Guardiola's selection gamble backfired with Manchester City going down to their third defeat in six days. Second-half goals by Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino cancelled out Gabriel Jesus' second-minute opener to seal a comfortable 5-1 aggregate victory for the five-time European champions. But the final score does little to reflect a tumultuous quarterfinal second leg at the Etihad, with City subjecting Liverpool to a first-half onslaught that should have been rewarded with a second goal when Leroy Sane's goal was wrongly ruled out for offside on 43 minutes, just moments after a Bernardo Silva shot hit the post. The decision of Spanish referee Antonio Mateu Lahoz to rule out Sane's goal prompted a furious reaction by City manager Guardiola, who was sent to the stands for his protests. It was a bad moment on a bad night for Guardiola, who had surprised many by naming top scorer Sergio Aguero on the bench for a game City needed to score at least three goals to save the tie. By the time Aguero entered the fray on 66 minutes, the tie was as good as over following Salah's equaliser nine minutes earlier. But Liverpool's victory has left City with a sense of deflation just weeks after being billed as the greatest team in Premier League history. The quadruple has become a double, which is still some achievement, but City have once again fallen short in the Champions League despite having Guardiola in charge. Liverpool, meanwhile, march on as they attempt to win a sixth European Cup next month. Recent years have shown that you need a goal-scoring superstar to win the Champions League and they are usually called Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi. Only Chelsea in 2012 and Bayern Munich in 2013 have kept the European Cup out of Real Madrid's or Barcelona's hands in the Champions League this decade, and the success of the Spanish giants has largely been down to Messi and Ronaldo. But in Salah, Liverpool may just possess a player capable of delivering the Champions League with his scoring ability. The Egypt international, who opened the scoring in last week's 3-0 first-leg win, scored the crucial equaliser at the Etihad to take his tally for the season to 39 in all competitions. Salah seems capable of turning even the slightest opportunity into a scoring chance, and at this level the ability to do that can be priceless. Whoever Liverpool face in the semifinals, they will face an almighty battle to reach the final in Kiev. But Salah gives them a chance no matter who they come up against, especially when his talents are supported by the underrated Firmino and Sadio Mane. A historic humiliation for Barcelona Roma's Edin Dzeko, Daniele De Rossi, and Kostas Manolas had as well. All three had scored in the first leg, De Rossi and Manolas in their own goal, and now all three had scored in the second leg, the road leading to redemption and a historic result. The Greek stood, tears welling in his eyes while they went wild at the Stadio Olimpico. As for Barcelona, they have not been back to the semi-final since they won the 2015 Champions League: for a third year in a row, they've been knocked out in the quarters. It wasn't supposed to be this way, not this time. When the draw was made, Sport described it as a "sweetie"; before the second leg, 4-1 up, they announced that Barcelona could "touch the semi-final". It slipped from their hands. Before the game, Ernesto Valverde said his team had to ensure that "nothing extraordinary happens", but it did. What happened, said Sport, was "a failure with no excuses". Their cover is black, reserved for days of mourning. It was, the front page said, enough "to make you cry". "Total failure," Marca's front called it. Well, "it"? They. Marca gleefully put Pep Guardiola alongside his former team. They were both out. Everyone expected City to be, at least after Anfield; Barcelona were another matter. El Mundo Deportivo called it "the fall of Rome", Marca called it the "fall of the Barcelona empire" and for AS in the eternal city they had suffered an "imperial failure", sent falling to earth, in ruins now. Juan Cruz was calling it a "suicide", in which the people out there were not Barcelona's players but "ghosts", and in which by the end they couldn't cry because there were "no tears left".
