Dinamo Zagreb produced one of the great European comebacks of this qualifying summer on Tuesday night, hauling back a two-goal deficit and outlasting ten-man Thun through extra time to reach the third qualifying round of the Champions League.
The Croatian champions trailed 2-0 inside the opening 22 minutes at a heaving Stadion Maksimir, only to score three times, survive a red card controversy in their favour, and finish the job through Moris Valinčić's rasping strike in the 112th minute.
It completed a 4-3 aggregate win over the tie, after the first leg in Switzerland had ended 1-1, and it means Zagreb avoid the ignominy of an early European exit that once looked distinctly possible.
Thun, appearing composed and clinical early on, went ahead through Brighton Labeau's fourth-minute finish before Marco Bürki doubled the lead in the 22nd minute, putting the Swiss side 3-1 up on aggregate and firmly in control of the tie.
Zagreb needed a response and got one just after the hour, when Dion Drena Beljo converted to make it 2-1 on the night in the 67th minute — the same minute in which Bürki, Thun's second scorer, was shown a red card after a VAR review upgraded the original sanction.
Reduced to ten men and clinging to a slender aggregate lead, Thun could not hold out. Lukas Kačavenda levelled the tie at 2-2 on the night — 3-3 on aggregate — with just over ten minutes of normal time remaining, sending the match into extra time.
The additional 30 minutes were tense and largely even until Valinčić, a Zagreb right-back not renowned for his finishing, drove in from distance in the 112th minute for a goal that settled the contest and sent the home crowd into raptures.
The 3-2 win, secured after extra time, was enough to see Dinamo Zagreb through to the third qualifying round on away goals' modern equivalent — away-leg away form matters little now, but the away goal Thun conceded and could not answer proved decisive across the tie's balance sheet.
Zagreb's reward is a tie against Lithuanian champions Kauno Žalgiris, who eliminated KÍ Klaksvík of the Faroe Islands in the earlier round, according to the club's own qualifying-path preview published before the draw was confirmed.
Thun, for their part, drop into the Europa League qualifying path, a consolation route that nonetheless keeps Fabio Celestini's side in continental competition for at least one more round.
For Dinamo, the win extends a recent European pedigree that has repeatedly seen the club recover from difficult positions in qualifying rounds rather than folding under early pressure, a habit their supporters have grown to expect from this squad.
Zagreb's third qualifying round tie with Žalgiris is scheduled for early August, with the first leg on 4 or 5 August and the return a week later, giving the Croatian champions little time to recover from Tuesday's draining extra-time win before the next examination of their squad depth.
