UEFA CUP
AC Milan eased past FC Zurich into the UEFA Cup group stage on Thursday along with two-time champion Tottenham, who squeezed past Wisla Krakow.
Borussia Dortmund, the 1997 Champions League winners, were eliminated by Udinese 4-3 on penalty kicks, but Hamburg, Stuttgart, Schalke and Wolfsburg will form a strong German representation.
Four Spanish teams — Sevilla, league, Valencia, Real Santander and Deportivo La Coruna — also marched into the next phase.
England and Italy will each have three teams among the 40 in Tuesday’s draw.
Andriy Shevchenko scored his first goal since returning to Milan to secure the seven-time European Cup champion’s passage 4-1 on aggregate. Serie A rival Sampdoria also advanced.
Tottenham eased the pressure on under-fire manager Juande Ramos by completing a 3-1 aggregate win with a 1-1 draw at Wisla and will join Manchester City in the next phase after the newly enriched Premier League club repeated their 2-1 first-leg victory over Omonia Nicosia.
Aston Villa were held 1-1 by Litex Lovech, but were carried through 4-2 on aggregate. Standard Liege defeated Everton 2-1 to take the two-leg series 4-3.
Stuttgart drew 2-2 with Cherno More Varna, but progressed 4-3 past the Bulgarians; Schalke had a comfortable 4-1 first-leg advantage over Apoel Nicosia and played out a 1-1 draw; Wolfsburg drew 1-1 with Rapid Bucharest to oust the Romanians 2-1 on aggregate; and after a scoreless first leg Hamburg overcame Unirea Valahorum Urziceni 2-0 in Romania.
Benfica turned around a 3-2 first-leg loss to beat Napoli 2-0, with goals from Jose Antonio Reyes and Nuno Gomes.
Milan didn’t need to exert themselves to defend a 3-1 lead from the first leg at the San Siro two weeks ago.
OFFSIDE TRAP
The goal arrived when Shevchenko timed his run to beat the offside trap and collect a pass before slipping his shot from 12m under Zurich goalkeeper Johnny Leoni.
Tottenham’s progression was secured by Arkadiusz Glowacki’s own-goal in the 58th minute.
The visitors had come under sustained pressure from Wisla, but menaced after the break with Fraizer Campbell firing over from distance on his first start, before playing a crucial role in Tottenham’s goal.
As Gareth Bale swung in a low cross from the left, Campbell was almost clinging to defender Glowacki, forcing the Wisla captain to clip the ball inside the far post.
As the Poles went in search of an equalizer, Gomes rescued Spurs by tipping over from Piotr Brozek in 80th but was beaten by his twin brother three minutes later. Pawel Brozek lobbed the onrushing Brazil goalkeeper, who made amends in the 87th by repelling the striker’s header while on his knees.
Udinese defender Aleksandar Lukovic converted the decisive spot kick after the Italians’ goalkeeper Samir Handanovic blocked shots from Tamas Hajnal and Jakub Blaszczykowski in the shootout.
Hajnal scored at the end of each half as Dortmund evened the aggregate following Udinese’s 2-0 win in the first leg.
Asier del Horno and David Villa scored second-half goals as Valencia rallied for a 2-1 victory over CS Maritimo, who trailed 1-0 going into the second leg.
Elano and Shaun Wright-Phillips scored within the first ten minutes of the second half to clinch Man City’s victory over their Cypriot opponents.
The Premier League club endured an anxious final 12 minutes after Oladimeji Rasheed Alabi exploited poor defending to pull one back for Omonia.
INITIATIVE
Despite the away-goal advantage following a 2-2 draw in England, Standard Liege took the initiative against Everton and teenager Axel Witsel slid the ball in from a tight angle in the 22nd minute.
Everton equalized when goalkeeper Espinoza fumbled a corner and Phil Jagielka pounced to jab the ball home in the 67th.
Eleven minutes later, Serbian forward Jovanovic ran through the Everton defense and was brought down in the penalty area. He stepped up to convert the penalty himself.
Four-time European champions Ajax breezed past Borac 2-0 to advance 6-1 on aggregate.
While Sampdoria rallied to beat Kaunas 2-1, the Italians’ passage was never in doubt thanks to a 5-0 victory two weeks ago.
Two-time winners Feyenoord went through on away goals, recovering from a 1-0 first-leg deficit to beat Kalmar 2-1.
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