Man City 4-3 Real Madrid: Ranking the best CL knockout games since 2010

When the biggest prize in European football is on the line and no awards are given out to the losers, football can get seriously wild.

We see it every season in the Champions League, and it never fails to delight us as fans, regardless of whether or not it involves our favourite team. Major upsets, unworldly goals and last-minute plot twists, we just can’t get enough of it.

Hosting a variety of the strongest squads in Europe, tensions flare in those knockout rounds. The handbrake comes off and the talent does the talking on the pitch. As a result, we get heavyweight football fixtures that create memories to look back on forever, making lists like these rather difficult to decide on, in truth.

But, we at GIVEMESPORT have reached into the archives and analysed our findings, to rank the top 13 Champions League knockout stage clashes since 2010.

Dejan Stankovic bettered Manuel Neuer’s sweeper keeping heroics after just one minute, reacting first to a tame, headed clearance and unleashing an obscene volley from the halfway line to give Inter a lead. A swift equaliser followed, as did some typical early-2010s Diego Milito filth in front of goal, before Inter ran out of steam and lost their clinical edge. Schalke, meanwhile, found a new lease of life and decimated the competition winners with three second-half goals, as Raul and Edu ran riot at San Siro.

Manuel Almunia in full stride. Sentences you don’t hear often. The Spaniard played out of his skin to keep Barcelona to just two goals at the Emirates, inspiring a comeback from the Gunners despite them losing both Andrey Arshavin and William Gallas to injury in the first-half. A young Theo Walcott shone with blistering pace and incredible technical ability to keep hopes