Alan Shearer and Lee Bowyer both scored in the final 25 minutes to rally Newcastle to a 2-1 victory over Dutch club Heerenveen on Thursday, one of only two clubs to win away from home in the first leg of the UEFA Cup's third round.
Alvaro Maior lifted Zaragoza over Fenerbahce 1-0 for the other away win, while CSKA Moscow, playing for the first time since being eliminated from the group stage of the European Champions League in December, beat Portuguese league leader Benfica 2-0.
PHOTO: AFP
A dearth of goals plagued three games with Alemannia Aachen vs. AZ Alkmaar, Dynamo Kiev vs. Villarreal, and Basel vs. Lille all ending in 0-0 draws.
In other games, Middlesbrough twice led before settling for a 2-2 draw with Grazer AK and Olympiakos beat Sochaux 1-0.
Klaas Jan Huntelaar gave Heerenveen the lead in the 23rd minute, but Shearer's 14th goal of the season in the 65th and Bowyer's back heel into the net with nine minutes remaining rescued Newcastle, which played the final four minutes with 10 men after Bowyer drew a second yellow card.
Alvaro converted off a long pass from Luciano Galletti in the 72nd minute, giving Zaragoza, which has lost two straight and four of its last five in the Spanish league, the advantage heading into next week's second legs.
In Krasnodar, Russia, Vasiliy Berezoutsky gave CSKA the lead after only 12 minutes on a 30-meter curling free kick and Vagner Love added the insurance in the 61st. CSKA, whose season is not set to resume for another three weeks, had not played a competitive match since a 3-1 victory over Paris Saint-Germain on Dec. 7.
In Kiev, Dynamo, which like CSKA has not played since December and is not set to resume league play until March 13, slogged through sleet and fog before settling for the goalless draw with Villarreal.
Dynamo, which was unbeaten in seven scrimmages during its warm-weather, midseason training, missed its best chance when Florin Cernat hit the crossbar in the 31st minute.
Grazer rallied twice against Middlesbrough, the last time when Roland Kollmann tied the match in the 78th, two minutes before being sent off.
Boudewijn Zenden and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink gave Middlesbrough the lead in the 51st and 65th minutes. Mario Bazina also scored for Grazer.
Cypriot forward Ioannis Okkas was the hero for Olympiakos, which made his 29th-minute goal stand up for the victory over Sochaux.
FC Slovan Liberec became the fifth Czech league team that will have points deducted at the end of the season for its involvement in a referee bribery scandal, an official said Thursday.
Third-placed Liberec will lose six points for its involvement, the Czech soccer federation spokesman, Daniel Macho, said. He said the club also was fined 500,000 koruna (16,633 euros) by the federation's disciplinary committee.
Liberec's sports director, Frantisek Myslivecek was fined 100,000 koruna and banned from any activity with the association for 24 months for his alleged attempts to bribe a referee in charge of his club's league match against Zlin on March 1. Liberec won 3-0.
A referees' supervisor in charge of that match, Christos Canaklis, was fined 50,000 koruna and suspended for two years, Macho said. He said the committee based its decision on the results of police investigations.
News of the scandal broke in May when police wiretaps revealed attempts to assure the results of matches. Since then, more than two dozen soccer officials and referees have been linked to allegations of paying or accepting bribes to fix games in the Czech Republic.
The association also has fined and suspended a number of referees and soccer officials.
Besides Liberec, four teams, two in the top Czech league -- FC Synot, which recently changed its name to FC Slovacko, and SFC Opava -- as well as second-division clubs Viktoria Zizkov and FC Vitkovice have been linked to the scandal.
The federation already has ruled that Synot and Zizkov will have 12 points deducted at the end of the season, Vitkovice will have nine points taken away and Opava six points. All the clubs also were fined.
Macho said police have been investigating two other first division clubs, AC Sparta Prague and FK Jablonec 97, as well as two teams of the second division for their possible role in the scandal. He said the federation expects to get results of the investigation from police by the end of February.
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