Who goes on most often when the first leg in Europe ends at 0-0?

Sometimes it's hard to know exactly who a goalless draw in the first round of a European tie is best.

With goals outside at stake – at least for the moment – there's an old fight between denying your opponent a valuable shot away from home, but knowing that you (probably) need to score when things get more complicated.

Since 2000, only one club in the Champions League has managed not to score at all, when Atletico Madrid eliminated PSV on penalties in 2017/18 after draws and consecutive extra time.

Liverpool hopes to have a less trying experience, even if he failed to defeat Bayern Munich in their first leg of the last 16 games at Anfield; Jurgen Klopp called it "not perfect, but good enough to work with". Unlike a 1-1, the 0-0 is perhaps a 50-50 as you can get when it comes to two-legged knockout football.

Where is it? Rather than leaving the imagination to speculative badumptions, we dug a bit back to 1999/2000 (or 2003/04 in the UEFA / Europa League Cup, before a format change) and discovered the likelihood that Local / outside teams succeed. after a draw in the first leg.

And the results are in …

It is interesting to note that the data for the first knockout matches of the Champions League (last 16) and the Europa League (last 32) are somewhat distorted by the teams ranked by the group's arrival at this stage, but the results show a clear trend between the two competitions your chances of ousting the other lot are significantly better if you were first on the move.

Of the 25 first-leg games that ended at 0-0 since the start of the millennium, 15 (60%) ended in a home win in the second. This figure has however slightly decreased (58%) if you take Atleti's aforementioned shot hits (which you should, really).

It is interesting to note that only two of these links – Barça's fierce victory over Chelsea in 2008/09 and Milan's semifinal success over Inter in 2002/03 – have been defeated.

It's a very similar story in the Europa League too, although the correlation is even stronger. Of the 47 draws that ended scoreless at half-time, 31 (66%) go to the return team of the second leg.

Again, remove one of those who allowed the Rangers to win their victory against Fiorentina in the 2007/08 semifinal and the ratio goes up. In fact, the race of the Gers until the final that year defied all expectations: three of his victories in the round of 16 were played after the first leg 0-0 in the first leg while they were at home ( on the Panathinaikos in the last 32 and Sporting in the quarterfinals).

Relatively less of these badyzed UEFA / Europa League Cup matches were decided on away goals – two of 47 come via Rangers (gah!) And Atletico Madrid (in their race to win in 2010 against Sporting in the quarters).

Of course, there is a caveat to all of the above. The data does not take into account the relative strength of the teams, never better highlighted than the last 16 meetings of Bayern Munich with Shakhtar Donetsk in 2014/15. After a draw in Ukraine, Bayern duly hammered his unfortunate opponent 7-0 in the second leg.

It's unlikely that such a fate will happen in Liverpool unless their team is hit by an epidemic of polydactylism (or something of the sort), but history will not be favorable to them when they do not. they will travel to Munich for the second round on 13 March.

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