Manchester City and AS Monaco put on quite a show in the second-half of Tuesday’s Champions League tilt, with a missed Radamel Falcao penalty, a fortuitous Sergio Aguero equaliser, a Falcao redemption chip goal, and a trio of efforts from Aguero, John Stones and Leroy Sane making for an epic back-and-forth at the Etihad Stadium.

Twitter just couldn’t even by the 90-minute mark. Here’s the reaction:

Falcao misses penalty, redeems himself with stunning chip

Aguero responds to make it 3-3

Stones gives Manchester City a 4-3 lead

The general consensus

Leicester City may very well be the weakest side remaining in the Champions League. The Foxes are still waiting for their first goal in 2017 and possess the longest run of matches without a goal in Europe’s top-five leagues.

But Claudio Ranieri believes Leicester’s tie against Sevilla in the Champions League’s Round of 16 can mark a watershed.

At a press conference Tuesday, a reporter reminded Ranieri that Seville, Spain is famous for bullfighting and asked whether the Italian manager should be treated as the matador in the tie. The glasses-wearing tactician was already smiling by the end of the question, and he replied: “If I have the balls?” After a pause, he added: “The matador.”

“I could leave last season – nobody could tell me nothing,” Ranieri said, per the Guardian’s Stuart James. “I won the title, I have something but I wanted to stay because I knew it was a difficult year. I came here to build something good for Leicester and I keep going. I forget the title, I go back and I want to achieve something good for these fans, for the chairman and for the city.”

Barring the mathematical improbability of Leicester defending its crown in the Premier League, the Champions League is the Foxes’ only remaining shot at silverware as the club crashed out of the FA Cup on Saturday at the hands of Millwall in the tournament’s fifth round.

Manchester City pulled off an incredible 5-3 win over AS Monaco in the first leg of an enthralling last-16 tie on Tuesday, with both sides swapping punches (and goals) before Pep Guardiola’s side emerged triumphant.

It was equal parts amazing and head-spinning.

But how does this match rank among the best back-and-forth’s in Champions League knockout-round history?

Here are some other memorable nights of action between two teams that traded jabs throughout 90 minutes.

Schalke tests Real Madrid’s resolve

In the 2014-15 Champions League Round of 16, Real Madrid went into its second-leg tilt against German outfit Schalke 04 holding a 2-0 victory procured at the Veltins-Arena, but what transpired at the Santiago Bernabeu was nearly a dream turned nightmare for fans of Los Blancos.

Christian Fuchs opened the scoring for Schalke in the 20th minute, before Cristiano Ronaldo notched an equaliser five minutes later. All seemed well for Real Madrid, but for another goal by Klaas-Jan Huntelaar at the 40-minute mark. Ronaldo redeemed his side again at the stroke of halftime, then Karim Benzema looked to end the tie once and for all with his 53rd-minute strike.

But Leroy Sane – who starred Tuesday at the Etihad for Manchester City – turned up the heat for Schalke, scoring in the 57th minute, and Real Madrid’s assured lead was under threat once more. It nearly evaporated when Huntelaar added another in the 84th minute, but Madrid held on to survive what should have been a straightforward match on paper.

Aggregate: Real Madrid 5-4 Schalke

Borussia Dortmund’s 2012-13 heroics

Borussia Dortmund’s historic 2012-13 Champions League run may have ended in the final at the hands of German rival Bayern Munich, but the underdog side’s path to the end was paved by a pair of incredible turnaround results orchestrated by then-manager Jurgen Klopp.

Dortmund kicked off its Round of 16 tie against Shakhtar Donetsk, with Darijo Srna opening the scoring at the half-hour mark. That just wouldn’t do for Robert Lewandowski, who equalised just shy of half-time. But, as in the first half, Dortmund went down in the second courtesy of Douglas Costa, and needed an 87th-minute leveler by Mats Hummels to spare its blushes.

A 3-0 win in the second leg assured Dortmund a quarter-final match up with Malaga, and a 0-0 draw in the away fixture set up a huge chance at Signal Iduna Park for the second leg. There, Joaquin opened the scoring, before Lewandowski equalised. Then, in the 82nd minute, Eliseu scored a second away goal for Malaga.

But for a 91st-minute goal by Marco Reus and a 93rd-minute winner by Felipe Santana, Dortmund would have been eliminated at home. Instead, that epic last-gasp double saved Dortmund’s day.

Aggregate: Dortmund 5-2 Shakhtar // Dortmund 3-2 Malaga

Liverpool gives Chelsea a scare

It took quite a few goals to separate two Premier League giants in the 2008-09 Champions League quarter-finals. Chelsea disposed of Liverpool quite easily with a 3-1 win in the opening stanza at Anfield, but Liverpool made sure to return the favour at Stamford Bridge by equalising on aggregate by way of a pair of first-half goals by Fabio Aurelio and Xabi Alonso.

Chelsea responded with a Didier Drogba goal in the 51st minute, an Alex strike in the 57th minute, and a Frank Lampard goal in the 76th minute. It was all over…until it wasn’t. Suddenly, Liverpool mounted a response, with Lucas Leiva scoring in the 81st minute and Dirk Kuyt scoring another two minutes later.

Lampard took it upon himself to answer the question “is the comeback real?” by scoring Chelsea’s seventh of the tie in the 89th minute. That was that.

Aggregate: Chelsea 7-5 Liverpool

The most epic comeback of all

Of course, we can’t talk about back-and-forth encounters without mentioning the greatest of them all: Liverpool’s incredible come-from-behind Champions League victory over AC Milan in 2005 remains perhaps the greatest plot twist in the tournament’s history.

Milan dominated the first 45 minutes, with Paolo Maldini opening the scoring right off the bat and Hernan Crespo adding two more before halftime. But then Steven Gerrard’s side trotted out for the second half and pulled off an epic six-minute revenge mission. The Englishman scored in the 54th minute, which was then followed up by Vladimir Smicer and Alonso.

The rest, as they say, is history, and Liverpool won it all on penalties.

(Photos courtesy: Action Images)

It was an honest answer from Kevin De Bruyne, but perhaps not the wisest one. Invited by a French journalist to share his thoughts on Monaco’s teenage forward Kylian Mbappe, the Manchester City player admitted that he basically did not have any.

“I don’t know a lot about him,” confessed De Bruyne on Monday. “Personally I don’t watch a lot of football. I have a little baby right now, so I spend a lot of time on my family.

“For me that’s a more important thing to do at home right now.”

One day later, De Bruyne knows a little bit more.

Not even Monaco’s own supporters had expected Mbappe to start the first leg of the Champions League last-16 tie against City at Etihad Stadium. But start he did, Leonardo Jardim naming him up front alongside Radamel Falcao.

Related – By the numbers: City, Monaco combine for record-setting goal haul

Who could blame the manager for taking this gamble? Was it really even a gamble at all? With eight goals in his last seven starts across all competitions, Mbappe felt more like a certainty.

As early as the 10th minute, there he was: barreling forwards with the ball at his feet on a lightning-fast counter-attack. In six seconds Mbappe went from his own half to the Manchester City penalty area. He left John Stones for dead with a step-over and cut inside, but Nicolas Otamendi came across just in time to close the gap and block his attempted shot.

That was just a tiny hint of what was to come on a rambunctious evening in Manchester, in which both teams attacked relentlessly and defended horrendously. City would end up getting the better of things, grabbing the final three goals in a 5-3 win, but not before Mbappe had given us a better picture of his talent.

He has been widely compared to Thierry Henry, hardly surprising given that they both came through the youth system at Monaco as left-wingers capable of adapting to play inside. But Mbappe is different, more direct and certainly more muscular in his tussles with defenders than his predecessor at the same age.

Perhaps more confident, as well. “It’s always flattering to be compared to great players but each player has to write his own story,” Mbappe told Telefoot in December. “Thierry Henry wrote his, and now it’s up to me to write mine. I hope it will be more beautiful than his, or at least as beautiful.”

That is no small ambition. Henry, lest we forget, was a Ballon d’Or runner-up in his playing days, who won the Premier League’s Golden Boot on four separate occasions and lifted league titles in France, England and Spain. Oh, the World Cup and European Championship, as well.

But say this for Mbappe: he is certainly setting one heck of a pace. He has broken two of Henry’s records at Monaco already, becoming the youngest player ever to represent the club when he made his debut at 16 years and 347 days back in December 2015, and then the youngest ever to score when he netted in a win over Troyes two-and- a-half months later.

Mbappe would shatter another team record on Tuesday night – although this one had previously belonged to David Trezeguet. In the 40th minute he ran clean through onto Fabinho’s chipped free-kick and thrashed it into the roof of the net.

Related: Teenage stud Mbappe roasts City, becomes UCL’s 2nd-youngest French scorer

At 18 years and two months, he was the youngest Monaco player ever to score in the Champions League, and the second-youngest Frenchman – behind Karim Benzema. At the time, it seemed as though he might also have struck a crucial blow in this tie, giving Monaco a 2-1 lead heading into the break.

He could not be blamed for the subsequent defensive collapse, nor indeed a woeful missed penalty from Falcao. Mbappe was hardly flawless, but even his worst moments often seemed to arrive in circumstances made possible by previous brilliance. In the 69th minute he fired into the side-netting from close range – eschewing a straightforward pass to Falcao in the middle – after bamboozling Pablo Zabaleta with a body swerve.

A performance like this will, inevitably, sharpen speculation of a big-money move in the summer. It is worth noting, though, the words that Mbappe shared with reporters last month.

“I want to be a great player,” he said. “And I think the great players, wherever they went, they won and they left their mark. That’s what I want to do in Monaco. As of today, I have not done enough to leave. In football, everything is possible. But for now, I really want to impose myself and do something good here.”

Helping Monaco to turn this scoreline around in the second leg would certainly be a good place to start. It is a tall order but, on the strength of tonight’s attacking performance, not beyond Jardim’s team.

Until then, Mbappe will have to content himself with a smaller victory: letting De Bruyne know exactly who he is.

(Photos courtesy: Action Images)