AFP,
PARIS
Marcos
Senna’s spectacular freekick sparked Villarreal
to a 1-0 victory over Celtic
in their Champions League clash on Tuesday on a night that also saw
Spanish rivals Real
Madrid chalk up a 2-1 win
away at UEFA Cup titleholders Zenit
St Petersburg.
While
Villarreal trail Manchester United on goal difference in their group,
former United striker Ruud van Nistelrooy was on the mark in Real’s
hard-earned win over their Russian opponents to give the Spaniards
their best start to a Champions League campaign in five years.
The
man that Manchester
United hope will match up
to van Nistelrooy’s scoring exploits, Dimitar Berbatov, scored
his first goals for United since his multimillion pound move from
Spurs with a double in their 3-0 win over Danish side Aalborg,
coached by former Arsenal boss Bruce Rioch.
Arsenal
rebounded from their 2-1 humiliation by Hull on Saturday to thrash
former Champions League winners Porto
4-0 with two of the men most criticized for the Hull defeat, Robin
van Persie and Emmanuel Adebayor scoring a brace apiece.
Italian
giants Juventus
also had a striker to thank for saving them as Vincenzo Iaquinta
notched up a double as they came from 2-0 down to draw 2-2 with
Belarusian debutants BATE
Borisov.
Senna
showed the same sort of form he had done during Spain’s
triumphant march to the Euro 2008 title earlier this year as his
freekick deservedly gave Villarreal victory.
“Getting
the three points was the most important thing tonight but we can’t
relax because if you go to sleep in this competition the other teams
end up above you,” the Brazilian-born midfielder said. “We
dominated the second half but had to wait for the goal. Fortunately
my free-kick went in.”
Real
were fortunate to come away from Russia with all three points as
Senna’s fellow Euro 2008 winner Iker Casillas conceded.
“In
the end we suffered more than we should have done,” the keeper
said.
United’s
easy win came at a cost with Paul Scholes and Brazilian fullback
Rafael — preferred to Wes Brown — picking up injuries but
Berbatov was delighted to at last have got off the mark.
“I
knew they would come sooner or later but I’m happy it was today
[Tuesday]. I helped the team to win and that is the most important
thing,” he said.
Arsenal
boss Arsene Wenger had promised wholsesale changes after the Hull
defeat but in the end he didn’t make many and he was ecstatic
at the manner in which his side responded.
“It
is the response I wanted. Maybe it was our most complete performance
this season,” Wenger said. “We could have scored a few
more but most important was to win and respond in a convincing way.”
“I
didn’t make many changes because I didn’t want to give a
feeling that you punish one player more than another. Sometimes you
have to give a team a chance to respond quickly,” he said.
For
Juventus coach Claudio Ranieri his side’s first-half
performance against BATE was well summed-up.
“It
was a nightmare,” he said.
In
other games Fiorentina
drew 0-0 with Steaua
Bucharest,
Bayern
Munich
drew 1-1 with Lyon
and Fenerbahce
drew 0-0 with Dynamo
Kiev.