Kevin Gameiro scored a late winner to send Sevilla through to the semi-finals of the Europa League at the expense of Zenit Saint Petersburg.
SEE ALSO:
Champions League Quarter-Final draw
Having lost the first leg 2-1, Andre Villas-Boas and his Zenit team knew they needed to start strongly in order to reverse their fortunes in front of their own fans.
However, despite over 24,000 cheering them on at the Petrovsky Stadium, they started sluggishly and were penalised inside six minutes when Carlos Bacca scored from the penalty spot.
Neto had been punished for bringing down Vitolo, although replays cast doubt on how much contact there was.
The early setback rocked Zenit and they could have fallen further behind soon afterwards when Bacca went close.
Whatever AVB said to his team at half-time clearly made a difference, and the Blue-White-Sky Blues emerged for the second period determined to reduce arrears.
They did just that after 48 minutes when Salomon Rondon profited from a bizarre Beto blunder to poke Zenit back into the match.
In his defence, the Sevilla keeper has recently returned after an extended spell on the sidelines, but even that doesn’t fully explain his odd lapse.
Zenit had their chances to draw level on aggregate, with Beto clearly shaken, but in the end it took a thoroughly glorious strike from Hulk to give them the lead on the night.
The Brazilian picked the ball up far from goal in the right channel and sent a ferocious effort towards goal, Beto failed to deal with it, and Rondon tapped in just to be sure.
With 20 minutes left, Zenit had the better of the game, and could have completed their turnaround.
However, they were silenced five minutes before the end when substitute Kevin Gameiro won it for Sevilla with a powerful finish.
Zenit had nothing left in the tank and were unable to respond. As they realised defeat was upon them, and as Sevilla began their celebrations, the dying moments were punctured with several stoppages for squabbles.
It failed to dampen the mood in the Sevilla camp, the reigning champions advance to the final four.