7 clubs we can’t believe ever made it to a Champions League semi-final
The Champions League is still arguably the most thrilling competition in club football, but it’s not all that unpredictable these days as well-backed European giants like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Manchester City and PSG routinely make it into the latter stages.
But you don’t have to go back that far to find a bit more variety, with a range of clubs who can only dream of making it as far as the Champions League semi-finals these days.
We’ve taken a look back at seven clubs we can’t believe made it to the Champions League semis.
Rangers
Okay, we’re cheating a bit to kick things off, but bear with us. Rangers haven’t actually made it to a Champions League semi-final.
While the Glasgow giants weren’t technically in a final-four knockout clash, they were just 180 minutes from booking their place in the final. That’s effectively the same thing, right?
Younger readers might not remember the early years after the European Cup’s rebrand to the Champions League, where UEFA were seemingly obsessed with group stages.
Modern football is rubbish in a lot of ways, but simplifying things down to a series of two-legged knockouts is undoubtedly a change for the better.
Where were we? Back to Rangers, who were at their absolute pomp in the early 90s.
In 1992-93 they won a domestic treble and Ally McCoist was at the peak of his powers, winning the European Golden Shoe with 34 goals in the Scottish top flight and 49 in all competitions.
Walter Smith’s men went unbeaten in Europe that season. They made it through two-legged qualifiers against Danish side Lyngby and English champions Leeds United before notching two wins and four draws from their group-stage double-headers against Marseille, CSKA Moscow and Club Brugge.
They finished just one point behind eventual champions Marseille in the final standings, agonisingly close to booking a bout with Fabio Capello’s Milan – the other group winners – at Munich’s Olympiastadion.
Nantes
Nantes still hold the record for the fewest Ligue 1 defeats in a season, having lost just once when they cantered to the title in 1994-95.
PSG were recently hoping to surpass that side as French football’s first-ever invincibles, but Luis Enrique’s men succumbed to their first league defeat of 2024-25 on Friday. The honour remains shared.
Well drilled by club icon Jean-Claude Suaudeau, Nantes responded well to the departure of homegrown star Christian Karembeu by going deep in Europe in 1995-96.
The French champions demonstrated how obdurate they were in the Champions League, losing just once in the group stage and grinding through as runners-up after hard-fought goalless draws against Porto and Panathinaikos.
After vanquishing Spartak Moscow in the quarters, Nantes gave Serie A giants a proper test in the semis.
They lost 2-0 in Turin but produced a spirited 3-2 comeback victory on home soil in the return leg.
Panathinaikos
Nantes weren’t the only surprise team to make it all the way to the semis in 1995-96. Panathinaikos, who topped their group, made it to the other one against Louis Van Gaal’s Ajax.
But while it’s wild to think of a Greek side making it to the final four through a modern lens, it’s worth remembering that the landscape of European football was completely different back in the 1990s.
The early years of the new-look Champions League were more akin to the more open romance of the old European Cup than the competition, dominated by the same few well-backed clubs, that we recognise nowadays.
Ajax getting their hands on the trophy was one symbol of an era that feels alien today.
But take a look at the knockout stages, where Barcelona, PSG, Bayern Munich and the Premier League champions (Blackburn Rovers) were nowhere to be found, but Nantes, Panathinaikos, Legia Warsaw and Spartak Moscow were.
Legia Warsaw helped dump out Alan Shearer and company in the group stages, but they were no match for the Greek champions in the quarters. Panathinaikos completed a resounding 3-0 victory on aggregate, scoring all three goals on home soil after a goalless draw away.
Panathinaikos gave Ajax a scare in the semis, winning the first leg 1-0 in Amsterdam before Van Gaal’s brilliant young side came roaring back with a 3-0 remontada in Athens.
Dynamo Kyiv
The old ‘European Cup’ feel of the Champions League has ebbed away over time, but it was still there in 1998-99.
Of the final four, Manchester United, Bayern Munich and Dynamo Kyiv were all chasing trebles – back when that was still a rare, unheard-of achievement.
And just look at the four coaches contesting the semi-finals: Ancelotti. Ferguson. Hitzfeld. Lobanovskyi. Football heritage or what?
Coached by influential football grandmaster Valeriy Lobanovskyi, Dynamo Kyiv boasted a young Andriy Shevchenko and Sergiy Rebrov and genuinely could’ve made it all the way.
Dynamo demonstrated their outrageous quality by taking four points from Premier League champions Arsenal in the group stages before knocking out the holders Real Madrid in the quarters.
They held a two-goal lead over Bayern in the first leg of the semis but conceded twice late on in a thrilling 3-3 draw in the Ukrainian capital, and were made to pay for it with a 1-0 defeat in Bavaria in the second leg.
READ: Why the 1998-99 Champions League was European football at its very best
Leeds United
On the one hand, you probably can believe Leeds United made it to the Champions League semi-finals.
Not only did Leeds have serious pedigree as a club – 1975 European Cup finalists, 1992 English First Division winners – but they had quality and ambition. No Premier League side picked up more points in the year 2001. This was a serious side capable of competing.
Even younger football enthusiasts who weren’t around to see David O’Leary’s ‘babies’ in their unforgettable 2000-01 campaign probably know the well-worn fable.
‘Doing a Leeds’ has its own Wikipedia page, while the riches-to-rags story even inspired a widely-used ‘Leeds Days’ idiom in South Korea.
Before the fall, they were a sight to behold. They made it out of the two group stages – featuring the likes of Barcelona, Real Madrid, AC Milan and Lazio – before blowing away Deportivo La Coruna with a 3-0 victory in front of a raucous Elland Road in the quarters.
Hector Cuper’s supremely organised Valencia proved a bridge too far in the semis.
…On the other hand, it still beggars belief that they could fall to the second tier just three years later, down to League One another three years after that, and ultimately take 16 years to make it back to the Premier League.
How on earth can you mess things up that badly?
QUIZ: Can you name every player to feature in Leeds United’s 2000-01 CL semis run?
Deportivo La Coruna
You suspect that a member of Depor’s board could’ve done with perusing that ‘Doing a Leeds’ Wikipedia page as a cautionary tale on what not to do. Alas.
Super Depor’s fall from grace wasn’t quite as swift or spectacular as Leeds’, but it was still quite something, relegated to Spanish football’s regional third tier for the first time in their history back in 2020.
They have since made it back to the Segunda Division, but reclaiming their former glories still looks a long way off.
They won the La Liga title in 1999-00 and finished runners-up two years after that.
In 2002, they p*ssed on Madrid’s 100th birthday party celebrations, beating them 2-1 in the Copa del Rey final at the Bernabeu.
Alongside those domestic achievements, Depor were appointment viewing on Champions League nights.
Never more so than the 4-0 quarter-final comeback against AC Milan in 2003-04, still one of the most remarkable results in the competition’s history.
In the semis, they were only narrowly beaten by Jose Mourinho’s Porto, 1-0 over both legs.
Schalke
Leeds and Deportivo aren’t the only Champions League semi-finalists to have suffered relegation.
Schalke are one of the historic giants of German football, Borussia Dortmund’s main local rivals, regularly roared on by 60,000+ supporters.
But in recent years, they’ve become a yo-yo club, albeit one that doesn’t look like returning to the Bundesliga again anytime soon.
They’re currently 13th in the second tier, closer to relegation than the play-offs.
As recently as 2010-11, they made an unlikely run to the Champions League semis, a year in which they sacked the inimitably eccentric Felix Magath and ended up 14th in the Bundesliga.
After bringing in Ralf Rangnick, they made it past Valencia and knocked out holders Inter before inevitably proving no match for Manchester United with a pair of defeats in the semis.
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