Uruguay striker Luis Suarez was on target again as Ajax Amsterdam held on for a nail-biting 3-3 draw at PAOK Salonica to reach the Champions League final qualifying round on Wednesday.
Fenerbahce were eliminated after a stunning 1-0 home defeat by Young Boys, while Celtic went out despite a 2-1 win over Braga and Dinamo Zagreb were stunned by Moldovan champions Sheriff Tiraspol, losing their tie on penalties.
Ajax, held 1-1 at home by Greek side PAOK last week, went through on away goals despite squandering a 3-1 lead in the third qualifying round, second leg tie.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Portuguese forward Vieirinha gave PAOK a halftime lead before Suarez, last season’s Dutch League top scorer with 35 goals, and Siem de Jong scored twice within three minutes for the Dutch team just after the break.
Rasmus Lindgren seemed to make the tie safe for the former European champions with a third in the 55th minute.
However, Ajax had to cling on after Dimitris Salpingidis pulled one back within a minute and Vladimir Ivic scored a stoppage-time equalizer.
Fenerbahce, quarter-finalists in 2008, were clear favorites against Swiss league runners-up Young Boys, who have never played in the group stage, after a 2-2 away draw last week.
Instead, the visitors took the initiative and Cameroon striker Henri Bienvenu took one of many chances when he scored from a narrow angle in the 40th minute.
The Turks, missing injured Uruguay captain Diego Lugano, had Miroslav Stoch sent off in the 53rd minute when he was shown a second yellow card for diving.
Braga stayed on course for their first group stage appearance after Paulo Cesar gave them a 20th-minute lead at Celtic. Although Gary Hooper and Efrain Juarez replied for the Scots in the second half, the Portuguese side ran out 4-2 aggregate winners.
Russia’s Zenit St Petersburg qualified against Romania’s Unirea Urziceni when Portuguese striker Danny scored the only goal of the tie.
Andriy Shevchenko set up two goals to help Dynamo Kiev win 3-1 at Ghent and complete a 6-1 aggregate win.
Ajax, Young Boys, Braga, Dynamo and Zenit are all in the non-champions half of the draw and will be joined in the next round by Spurs, Sampdoria, Werder Bremen, Auxerre and Sevilla.
The winners qualify for the group stage.
In the champions half, Austria’s Salzburg demolished Omonia Nicosia of Cyprus 4-1 to win 5-2 on aggregate.
Brazilian striker Cleo scored at the start and the end of the match to help Serbian champions Partizan Belgrade win 2-1 at HJK for a 5-1 aggregate win over the Finns.
FC Basel (Switzerland), Rosenborg Trondheim (Norway), Sparta Prague (Czech Republic), Zilina (Slovakia) and FC Copenhagen (Denmark) were among the other teams to move within one round of the group stage.
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