TURIN, Italy — Juventus captain Manuel Locatelli felt like crying after seeing his team’s remarkable Champions League fightback fall just short against Galatasaray on Wednesday.
Trailing 5-2 after the first leg, Juventus went 3-0 up in the return match — despite playing almost the entire second half with 10 men following Lloyd Kelly’s sending-off — to take the game to extra time.
United States midfielder Weston McKennie scored to draw the tie level over the two legs, but Galatasaray scored twice in extra time to lose 3-2 on the night and win 7-5 on aggregate.
Juventus fans applauded their team after the match despite getting eliminated.
“It almost makes me want to cry for how much we believed,” Locatelli said. “I think we gave our heart — and more.”
“These are the kinds of matches,” he added, “that stay with you.”
Juventus defender Federico Gatti, who scored the team’s second goal, felt the qualification was thrown away last week.
“It’s frustrating because we reached extra time a bit drained,” he said. “We had really put the game back on track, but I’ll say it again — we let it slip in the first leg. A tie like this simply can’t end that way.”
The loss for Juventus means just one Italian team remains in the Champions League for the round of 16 after Atalanta pulled off a stunning comeback to eliminate Borussia Dortmund.
Luciano Spalletti’s Juve side is also struggling on the domestic front, sitting in fifth place in Serie A, four points behind AS Roma for the last Champions League place for next season.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
