Modest Sporting Braga, who have never won a Portuguese league title, stunned five-time European champions Liverpool 1-0 with a first-half penalty in the Europa League on Thursday.
Two-time European champions Porto won 1-0 at CSKA Moscow in another of the round-of-16 first leg ties and Benfica completed an excellent night for Portugal with a 2-1 win over visiting Paris St Germain.
Andriy Shevchenko set Dynamo Kiev on the way to a 2-0 home win over big-spending Manchester City and wasteful Ajax Amsterdam were beaten 1-0 at home by Spartak Moscow.
Photo: EPA
Nilmar came off the bench to score twice, including a stoppage-time winner, in Villarreal’s 3-2 triumph at Bayer Leverkusen.
Braga dominated the first half against visitors Liverpool and Alan converted his spot kick in the 18th minute after defender Sotiris Kyrgiakos tripped Brazilian Mossoro.
Manager Kenny Dalglish was angry with Liverpool’s first-half display, during which Silvio also hit the woodwork for Braga.
“The first 35 minutes, we were terrible,” said the Scot, who was without injured captain Steven Gerrard and ineligible forward Luis Suarez. “The penalty summed up the way we were approaching the game. I think at 1-0 we’ve still got a chance, but if we play like we did at the start of the first half at Anfield, we haven’t got any chance.”
CSKA, playing their 11th match in this season’s competition, slumped to their first defeat after a superb effort from Porto’s Fredy Guarin, who turned his marker and scored from 25m in the 70th minute.
In Lisbon, Maxi Pereira and Franco Jara were on target as Benfica came from behind against Paris St Germain, Peguy Luyindula having put the French side ahead.
Shevchenko, 34, looked sharp when he turned in Andriy Yarmolenko’s cross in the 25th minute to put Dynamo Kiev ahead.
Oleh Gusev increased the Ukrainians’ lead 13 minutes from time.
Brazil striker Nilmar came off the bench in the 69th minute for Villarreal at Leverkusen and scored within a minute to put his team 2-1 ahead.
Gonzalo Castro leveled for the Bundesliga team two minutes later, only for Nilmar to break clear in the fourth minute of added time to slot home the winner.
Michal Kadlec had fired Leverkusen ahead with a 30m shot before Giuseppe Rossi replied for Spain’s last survivors as the first-half ended 1-1.
Ajax wasted a host of chances, with Siem de Jong the main culprit, before Alex snatched an opportunist goal for Spartak in the 57th.
Twente Enschede, however, had no trouble thrashing 2008 UEFA Cup winners Zenit St Petersburg in another Dutch-Russian clash, with two goals from Luuk de Jong and one from Denny Landzaat giving them a 3-0 win.
PSV Eindhoven completed a night of mixed fortunes for the Dutch when they were held 0-0 at home by Rangers.
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