Unfancied Belarusian club BATE Borisov held 10-man Anderlecht to a 2-2 draw on Wednesday to reach the Champions League’s third qualifying round with a 4-3 aggregate victory.
BATE’s reward will be to face Bulgarian champions Levski Sofia for a berth in the lucrative group stage of the competition.
Gennady Bliznyuk fired BATE 1-0 ahead on the night but Lucas Biglia’s penalty levelled in the 23rd minute for the Belgians, who lost defender Nemanja Rnic to a 71st minute red card.
PHOTO: AP
Vitali Rodionov restored BATE’s lead in the 83rd minute but the hosts endured a nervy finish after Jan Polak equalized three minutes later.
Cypriots Anorthosis Famagusta also delighted their fans although they had to survive a second half onslaught at Rapid Vienna in the return leg of their 4-3 aggregate success.
French midfielder Vincent Laban gave Anorthosis a 4-0 aggregate lead before a goal from Erwin Hoffer and a Stefan Maierhofer brace had them on the back foot in the closing stages. The Cypriots now face Greek champions Olympiakos Piraeus.
Ireland’s Drogheda United ended their European campaign with a creditable 2-2 draw at Dynamo Kiev that put the Ukrainian side through thanks to last week’s 2-1 win in Dublin.
Dynamo now face former Soviet Union first division rivals Spartak Moscow in an intriguing eastern European clash.
Swiss champions Basel twice came from behind to beat Sweden’s Gothenburg 4-2 and win the tie 5-3 on aggregate thanks to two late goals by Serbian midfielder Ivan Ergic.
Slovakia’s Artmedia Petrzalka brushed aside Finland’s Tampere United 4-2 for a 7-3 overall victory but they now face an uphill task against Juventus in the third round.
Fenerbahce strolled to a 7-0 aggregate rout of MTK Budapest and a meeting with Serbian champions Partizan Belgrade, who were 3-1 aggregate winners over Azerbaijan’s Inter Baku.
Polish champions Wisla Krakow earned a clash with 2006 winners Barcelona after a 5-0 drubbing of Beitar Jerusalem allowed them to overturn a 2-1 first-leg deficit.
In other ties Bosnians FK Modrica lost 1-2 at home to Aalborg as the Danes won 7-1 on aggregate and Panathinaikos of Greece earned a 0-0 draw with Dinamo Tbilisi in Georgia to win 3-0 on aggregate.
On Tuesday FBK Kaunas beat Rangers 2-1 in Lithuania to go through 2-1 on aggregate.
Latvians FK Ventspils and Norwegian side Brann Bergen drew 2-2 with Brann progressing on away goals.
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