Most Champions League knockout ties are tight, and for good reason. By the time the last 16 comes around, the teams left standing are the best clubs in Europe. At that stage of the competition, nothing comes easy. Defences are tight, away goals matter, and most ties are settled by small margins. That is what makes the rare high-scoring ties so memorable.
Only 18 in the competition’s entire history have produced 11 goals or more across two legs, which is part of what makes Champions League odds on knockout ties so interesting. These are the best of them.
Bayern Munich 12-1 Sporting CP, 2008-09 Round of 16
Bayern showed up in Lisbon for the first leg and absolutely took Sporting apart, winning 5-0 with Franck Ribery and Luca Toni both grabbing two goals each. It was a hammering, plain and simple. But somehow, the second leg in Munich was even worse.
The second leg saw six different Bayern players score in a 7-1 win that was, if anything, even more comfortable than the first. 13 goals in total, 12 of them Bayern’s. If you were following the Champions League tips at the time, the odds would have told you everything. Sporting were massive underdogs from the moment the draw was made, and the games themselves proved every bit of it right.
Watching the footage back now, it’s hard to find a single moment where Sporting looked like they had a chance. Bayern were simply in a different class across both legs, and there was nothing Sporting could do about it.
Liverpool 7-6 Roma, 2017-18 semi-finals
Of all the ties on this list, this is probably the one that best captures what the Champions League knockouts can do to a person. Liverpool were 5-0 up at half-time in the first leg at Anfield. Mohamed Salah was at his absolute best, and the tie looked finished before Roma had even touched the ball in the second half. Then Roma scored twice late on, and suddenly it was not so comfortable.
The second leg in Rome started with Liverpool leading 7-3 on aggregate and ended with Roma scoring three in a row to make it 7-6. Liverpool went through, but only just. 13 goals across two legs, and the drama was completely disproportionate to how one-sided it had looked at the interval of the first game.
Inter Milan 7-6 Barcelona, 2024-25 semi-finals
This one equalled the record and was probably the most dramatic of the lot. The first leg in Barcelona finished 3-3, with Inter scoring two, conceding two, going ahead again, only for Barcelona to level it in the final minutes.
The second leg at the San Siro followed a similar pattern but with higher stakes. Inter led 2-0 at half-time, Barcelona came back to take it to 3-2 with the tie level on aggregate, and it looked like the Spanish side were going through. Then Acerbi equalised in the third minute of added time. Frattesi came off the bench in extra time and scored the winner. Inter went to the final in Munich, where PSG beat them 5-0. 13 goals across two legs, and the tie had no right to be as close as it was.