THE scenes in the home dressing room at AS Roma’s Stadio Olimpico said it all – manager Eusebio Di Franceso stood at the door dispensing hugs and high fives to everyone while inside his jubilant players doused each other with water, stamped in unison and bellowed out the words to Vai Roma, a terrace favourite with the Roma fans.
The over-the-top celebrations were certainly merited. Trailing 4-1 from the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final against Lionel Messi’s imperious Barcelona side, Roma needed an unlikely 3-0 victory to progress. Eight minutes from time, with the score at 2-0 to the unfancied Italians, a glancing header from Greek defender Kostas Manolas delivered it. Cue mayhem in the Roma dressing room as the players celebrated one of the all-time great sporting comebacks.
In that spirit, here are 10 more stories of determination, indefatigability (and not a little luck) in the teeth of apparently overwhelming odds, drawn from all fields of human endeavour.
Apple
Today it’s the world’s most valuable company, but on the cusp of the Millennium that wasn’t the case – Apple was in real trouble in 1997 when co-founder Steve Jobs, who had been forced out in a boardroom coup in 1985, returned from exile. In 1999 Apple launched the iMac G3. The first iPod arrived three years later and then, in 2007, came the iPhone. The rest is history – literally.
Robert Downey Jr
The actor looked set for stardom when he received an Oscar nomination for playing Charlie Chaplin in Richard Attenborough’s 1992 biopic. But he lost the next decade of his career to a drug addiction which saw him yo-yo between jail and rehab. He clawed his way back in the Noughties and in 2008 was cast in his first bona fide blockbuster – David Fincher’s Iron Man. He hasn’t looked back since. Or down.
Winston Churchill
Just as regularly as he was bounced out of office, Churchill bounced back in again over the course of a political career which lasted half a century and during which he twice served as Prime Minister. The master of the political comeback, he was voted the greatest Briton of all time in a 2002 poll.
Liverpool FC
At 3-0 down, Liverpool appeared to be a beaten side when the half-time whistle blew in their 2005 Champions League final against AC Milan in Istanbul. Six blistering second half minutes later they were level and the Italians didn’t know what had just hit them. Liverpool went on to win the game on penalties when Jerzy Dudek saved from Andriy Shevchenko.
Marvel Comics
After years of falling sales exacerbated by a mid-1990s slump in the comic book market, the legendary creator of Spider-Man, The X-Men and The Fantastic Four filed for bankruptcy in 1996. A quarter of a century on, the company is a cultural behemoth thanks mostly to its blockbuster film franchises. The most recent, Black Panther, is now the tenth-highest grossing film of all time.
2012 Ryder Cup
Trailing the American golfers by 10 points to six going into the final day’s play at the Medinah County Club near Chicago, Europe’s players staged a breath-taking comeback that would later be dubbed “The Miracle at Medinah”, winning eight matches to retain the Ryder Cup.
Elvis Presley
Elvis never really went away, of course, so dominant a figure was he in American popular culture. But his televised 1968 “Comeback Special” marked a return to live performance after a seven year hiatus in which the musical landscape had changed dramatically. He was still only 33 – the same age Katy Perry is today – and, clad head to toe in black leather, he absolutely smashed it.
Although his property business filed for bankruptcy in 1991 after the Trump Taj Mahal hotel and casino in Atlantic City foundered, Trump worked his way back and then wrote about that journey – in typically self-effacing style, naturally – in a 1997 book he titled Trump: The Art Of The Comeback. His companies would file for bankruptcy a further five times in total, but he has survived every setback. And how.
Charlton Athletic FC
On December 21, 1957, at home to fellow Division Two side Huddersfield Town, Charlton were five-one down and playing with 10 men after captain Derek Ufton had gone off injured. Then, with 27 minutes left to play, they scored. A minute later, another goal. And four more after that, the winner coming in the 89th minute. Striker Johnny Summers set up two and scored the other five, including an eight-minute hat-trick. And the Huddersfield Town manager on the day? A certain Bill Shankly.
Lego
It’s 1998 nobody wants to play with their dad’s old plastic bricks and the Danish toy company founded in 1932 has just posted its first-ever loss. Fast forward to 2003 and it’s £560 million in debt and sales have gone off the cliff edge. Enter Jorgen Vig Knudstorp as forward-thinking new executive chairman. He reinvents the brand and a decade later it’s now one of the world’s most recognisable – and profitable. So there’s still life in dad’s old plastic bricks.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here