Championships LeagueBritish hopes of triumphing in Europe's premier club competition were flying high on Wednesday after an unprecedented five clubs qualified for the lucrative knockout phase of the Champions League.
Manchester United survived an early scare at Old Trafford to send ambitious Benfica packing 3-1 and into the UEFA Cup, while Arsenal played out a 0-0 draw with another Portuguese side, FC Porto, to join them in the last 16.
English champions Chelsea had qualified with room to spare, as had Liverpool and Scottish champions Celtic, who were comprehensively defeated 3-1 at FC Copenhagen as the Danes fought to restore some viking pride.
All four English Premiership clubs topped their respective groups, meaning the cross-Premiership clashes will be avoided at least until the quarter-finals.
Only Celtic, who finished second in Group F behind Manchester United, failed to avoid that relative setback which means the Scottish champions will play the first leg of the knockout phase at home.
But just how long any of the five Brits survive is another matter.
The likes of nine-times European champions Real Madrid, two-time champions Barcelona and six-times champions AC Milan are all in the hat for next Friday's draw.
United manager Alex Ferguson was buoyed by his team's performance on the night and hopes the two-time winners can go one better than last year's beaten finalists, Arsenal.
"There's lot of quality there in the last 16 now -- five British teams -- and it's absolutely fantastic," Ferguson said. "One of the British teams can win it, hopefully it's us."
From the five British teams still involved have come eight victories in the competition.
Liverpool were the last British club to win the continental crown when they won it for a fifth time last year, while Celtic became the first British club to be champions of Europe, in 1967.
Neither Arsenal nor Chelsea have won the European crown while United have won it twice.
Compare that to records elsewhere on the continent though and the Europeans' track record shines through.
Three Spanish sides have made the weight for the last 16, with defending and 1992 champions Barcelona squeezing in at the last minute with a 2-0 win over Werder Bremen at the Nou Camp on Tuesday.
Nine-times European champions Real Madrid, who were already qualified after finishing second in Group E behind French champions Lyon, finished their group campaign with a 2-2 draw away to Dynamo Kiev with a brace from Ronaldo putting the cherry on the cake.
Valencia, the UEFA Cup winners in 2004, have yet to win the Champions League but qualified with ease from a relatively easy Group D with four wins from six matches.
The Champions League would not be complete without the Italians. Some of their top clubs, including six-time European champions AC Milan, became embroiled in a match-fixing scandal last season but still the soccer-mad "Azzurri" went on to win the World Cup.
On Wednesday AC Milan fell 2-0 at home to Lille, allowing the French side to join the last 16 party for the first time.
It was a great performance from one of France's solid league clubs and one which their manager, Claude Puel, was only to happy to shout about.
"We showed a lot of maturity, a lot of know-how," said Puel, who has been to the semi-finals of the competition both as a player and as an assistant coach at his former club, Monaco.
"We stayed calm and didn't give any opportunities to Milan, and I think in the end they were lucky we didn't score even more," he said.
AC Milan coach Carlo Ancelotti admitted they had played badly, but promised a reinvigorated approach to the competition once key players return from injury.
"We'll now wait to see what the draw gives us and, in February, we will welcome back a few key players who have been injured," he said.
AC Milan, like the other group winners, will have the advantage of an away tie first in the next round while two-time winners Inter Milan, who finished second in Group B behind Bayern Munich, will play at home first.
Roma, like Lille, joined the last 16 for the first time when they beat Valencia 1-0 on Tuesday to finish second in Group D.
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, who has just celebrated 10 years working with the Gunners, joined his old foe, Ferguson, in applauding the influence of the Premiership on the competition.
"That shows how much the Premiership has improved," Wenger told Sky Sports.
Arsenal, who are only just getting over their defeat in last year's final, could face Barcelona in the next round, in a rematch of last year's final.
The other clubs to qualify were 1988 winners PSV Eindhoven, four-time winners Bayern Munich and two-time winners FC Porto.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier