Carlo Ancelotti will once again have to defy history to take Real Madrid into the UCL quarter-finals | OneFootball

Following their 2-1 win against Rayo Vallecano in La Liga, Real Madrid are set to return to action in the UEFA Champions League as they face Atletico Madrid in the second leg of the Round of 16 tie on Wednesday.

The Merengues will be coming into this game with a slight advantage, as they had won the first leg 2-1, with goals from Rodrygo Goes and Brahim Diaz.

While this one-goal advantage can ultimately prove to be the difference against a side as defensively stout as Atletico Madrid, such an advantage has not really proven to be a very good one for Los Blancos in their illustrious history in this competition.

Since the start of the modern UCL in 1992-93, there have been five times when Real Madrid got a 1-goal advantage over their rivals in the first leg of a two-legged round. In the majority of these cases, the Merengues ended up getting eliminated in the second leg.

The first time this happened was in the 1995-96 season, as Los Blancos faced Juventus in the quarter-finals of the competition. The Whites won 1-0 at the Santiago Bernabeu, before losing 2-0 in the second leg in Turin, and thus ended up getting eliminated from the competition.

Similarly, in the 2002-03 season, the Vikings enjoyed a 2-1 lead on aggregate in the semi-finals before the second leg against the same opponents, Juventus. However, a 3-1 defeat in the following leg resulted in their elimination.

There was a similar storyline in the Round of 16 tie of the 2004-05 UCL campaign for Real Madrid. After winning the first leg against the Old Lady with a 1-0 scoreline once more, the Merengues were again eliminated as the Italians emerged as 2-0 winners in extra time.

Two seasons later, in the 2006-07 UCL campaign, the Spaniards faced Bayern Munich in the Round of 16. In the first leg at the Santiago Bernabeu, Los Blancos beat the Germans 3-2. However, in the return leg in Munich, the Bavarians came out as 2-1 winners, thus eliminating the Vikings once again from the competition.

Thus, their history in UCL when they got a 1-goal advantage in the first leg of a two-legged tie does not paint a very rosy picture ahead of the second leg against Atletico Madrid.

However, there is still reason to hope that Carlo Ancelotti will get the job done this time, as he was the coach who overturned this trend back in his first stint at Real Madrid. The Merengues once again faced Bayern Munich in the semi-finals in that campaign and took a 1-goal advantage into the second leg after winning the first leg 1-0 at the Santiago Bernabeu.

But the second leg at the Fussball Arena was even better, as both Sergio Ramos and Cristiano Ronaldo scored two goals to get a 4-0 win for their team, getting one of their most memorable wins in recent history against Pep Guardiola’s side.

Thus, despite their overall negative history with such a scoreline, Real Madrid have all the reason to rely on Carlo Ancelotti ahead of this upcoming crucial tie on Wednesday.