vendredi 18 mars 2011

Portuguese trio progress as English sides crash

All three Portuguese sides reached the quarter-finals of football's Europa League as favourites Liverpoool and Manchester City went out on Thursday.

Portugal's Sporting Braga earned a goalless draw at five-time European champions Liverpool following their 1-0 win at home last week, and were joined in the last eight by Benfica and Porto.

Benfica earned a 1-1 draw at Paris St Germain to go through on a 3-2 aggregate. Porto, the 2003 UEFA Cup winners, put out CSKA Moscow, who won the title in 2005, thanks to a 2-1 victory to give them a 3-1 aggregate.

   Brazilian striker Hulk opened the scoring in the first minute when he floated a free-kick into the area and the ball carried on into goal.

   Freddy Guarin, who scored the winner in the first leg, made it two in the 24th minute before Zoran Tosic netted for CSKA five minutes later.

   Italian striker Mario Balotelli was sent off as highly-fancied Manchester City bowed out in a 2-1 aggregate defeat to Dynamo Kiev.

   Balotelli was shown a red card in the 36th minute for a high lunge on Goran Popov.

City struck three minutes later when David Silva touched a free-kick to Aleksander Kolarov who drove the ball in from the right angle of the penalty area for a 1-0 win - not enough for one of the Europa League favourites following their 2-0 defeat in Kiev.

"It's a disappointing result," said Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini.

"We deserved another goal tonight. We played a fantastic game with only 10 players. I didn't see the (Balotelli) incident from the bench so I can't comment. But we would have won the game with 11 players on the pitch."

   Dutch champions FC Twente went through on a 3-2 aggregate despite losing 2-0 at Zenit St Petersburg.

   Spartak Moscow won the other Russian-Dutch duel by defeating Ajax 3-0 for a 4-0 aggregate.

   PSV Eindhoven gave the Dutch two sides in the last eight with a 1-0 win at Rangers courtesy of a 14th-minute goal from Jeremain Lens.

   Spain's Villarreal sent Bayer Leverkusen out with a 2-1 win to follow up their 3-2 triumph last week in Germany.

   Santi Cazorla in the first half and Giuseppe Rossi on the hour put Villarreal in charge before a late own goal by Gonzalo Rodriguez.

   "When you make bad defensive mistakes you lose games like this," said Leverkusen coach Jupp Heynckes.

"Villarreal played very well but we helped them. We saw though that the Spanish are a top team in Europe who can play football."

Zenit, the 2008 UEFA Cup winners, began well as they sought to overturn a 3-0 defeat at Twente. Roman Shirokov in the 16th minute and Aleksand Kerzhakov in the 38th gave Zenit hope, but Twente were able to withstand the Russian side's efforts for an equalizer.

The draw for the quarter-finals, to be played on April 7 and 14, and semi-finals, to be played on April 28 and May 5, takes place Friday at UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland.

Aucun commentaire:

Enregistrer un commentaire