Andrea Pirlo kept Juventus on course for a home Europa League final after his superb free-kick settled their battle with Italian rivals ACF Fiorentina to send the Serie A leaders into the quarter-finals on Thursday.
Pirlo’s dead-ball accuracy after 71 minutes, which saw him caress the ball high into the far-right corner of the net, handed Juventus a 1-0 win in Florence and a 2-1 aggregate success over a Fiore side that finished with 10 men.
Juventus were joined in the last eight by last season’s beaten finalists SL Benfica, Porto, Valencia, Sevilla, Olympique Lyonnais, Basel and Dutch side AZ.
Photo: EPA
Benfica survived a spirited fightback by Tottenham Hotspur to earn a 2-2 second-leg draw in Lisbon and go through 5-3 on aggregate, while 2011 winners Porto, who sacked coach Paulo Fonseca this month, drew 2-2 at SSC Napoli to win 3-2 on aggregate.
Sevilla overcame city rivals Real Betis Balompie 4-3 on penalties, after a 2-2 aggregate draw, while 10-man Basel ended the impressive campaign of Austria’s Red Bull Salzburg, although their 2-1 away win, after a goalless first leg, was marred by a first-half interruption when Swiss fans threw objects on to the pitch.
This season’s final will be held at the Juventus Stadium in Turin on May 14, which was a huge incentive for the Italian league title holders, but Antonio Conte’s side needed something special from talisman Pirlo to stay in the competition.
Photo: AFP
Needing to score after Fiore grabbed an away goal in a 1-1 first-leg draw, Juventus were struggling for inspiration at the Stadio Artemio Franchi until Gonzalo Rodriguez was sent off for tripping Fernando Llorente to leave Pirlo with a sight of goal.
The Italy playmaker did not let runaway Serie A leaders Juve down, stroking a superb strike past Neto’s outstretched hand.
“We knew that we were going to have to fight for it, and Andrea’s goal was the crowning glory of a great performance,” Juventus defender Leonardo Bonucci said.
Benfica, who were 3-1 up from an impressive first-leg win in London, appeared to be cruising through after Ezequiel Garay’s first-half header, but injury-hit Spurs rallied.
Visiting Belgium winger Nacer Chadli’s quickfire double, a low shot and then a close-range finish, left Tottenham a goal away from forcing extra-time with 11 minutes left.
The Premier League side had a strong penalty appeal turned down, and then in stoppage-time, Benfica ’keeper Jan Obrak made a fine save to keep out Gylfi Sigurdsson’s header.
The Portuguese then won a penalty in the final seconds, which Lima converted to secure a 2-2 draw and extend Benfica’s unbeaten run at home in European competition to 11 games.
Porto ended Napoli manager Rafael Benitez’s hopes of leading a side to a second successive final after the Spaniard triumphed in the competition with Chelsea last season.
Napoli had looked the more likely to progress after Goran Pandev’s 21st-minute goal canceled out Porto’s 1-0 first-leg win, but the Portuguese side stunned the hosts after the break.
Fine strikes from Algerian substitute Nabil Ghilas and Ricardo Quaresma put Porto 2-1 up, with a stoppage-time equalizer from Duvan Zapata proving scant consolation for Napoli.
Sevilla piled on the misery for Real Betis after booking a place in the last eight by winning a tense penalty shootout after goals from Jose Antonio Reyes and Carlos Bacca saw the visitors wipe out a 2-0 first-leg home deficit.
Betis, who are bottom of La Liga and nine points adrift of the safety zone, had the upper hand in the shootout, but successive misses by Cedrick Mabwati and Nono condemned the green half of the city to a heart-breaking defeat.
Lyon eased through 5-3 against Viktoria Plzen, despite a 2-1 second-leg defeat in the Czech Republic, while a second-half goal from Paco Alcacer earned Valencia a 1-0 win at home to Bulgaria’s PFC Ludogorets Razgrad for a comfortable 4-0 aggregate success.
Dutchman Dick Advocaat, who guided Zenit St Petersburg to the 2007 — 2008 UEFA Cup title, took AZ into the last eight with a goalless draw against Anzhi Makhachkala in Ramenskoye.
Anzhi, propping up the Russian Premier League with one win in 21 games, failed to overturn a 1-0 first-leg deficit.
Their frustrations boiled over in stoppage-time when Karlen Mkrtchyan was shown a red card for a challenge on Steven Berghuis.
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