Borussia Dortmund and SSC Napoli were the headline acts to qualify for the UEFA Europa League knockout stage as both sides plundered a glut of goals in Thursday’s group matches.
Dortmund brushed aside Azerbaijani’s FK Qabala 4-0 in Germany while Napoli went one better with a 5-0 home thrashing of Danish side Midtjylland.
They will be joined in the last 32 by Molde, who beat former European champions Celtic 2-1 away and Rapid Vienna, who won by the same score at Viktoria Plzen.
Photo: Reuters
However, Braga, Sion, Schalke 04 and Lokomotiv Moscow will have to wait after missing out on the chance of moving forward with two group matches to spare.
There were some superb finishes to savor as Dortmund eased past Qabala with Germany forward Marco Reus scoring first with an unstoppable low drive after 28 minutes to ensure the Germans had found the net in each of their last 31 competitive games.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang doubled the lead with a left-foot effort before halftime and a Sergei Zenjov own-goal made it 3-0.
Photo: EPA
Henrikh Mkhitaryan rounded off the scoring with a shot that thundered into the net off the bar with 20 minutes remaining, leaving Dortmund top of Group C with 10 points.
Napoli waltzed into the knockout rounds and equaled their record European victory with goals from Omar El Kaddouri, a Manolo Gabbiadini double, Christian Maggio and Jose Callejon.
The Italians are now unbeaten in 14 matches across all competitions and sit top of Group D with an unblemished 12 points from their four games.
Mohamed Elyounoussi and the 40-year-old Daniel Hestad were on target for Norwegian champions Molde as they extended their Group A lead and secured their spot in the knockout stage.
There were also celebrations for Rapid Vienna who scored two goals through Philipp Schobesberger to beat Plzen and maintain their 100 percent record in Group E.
New Liverpool boss Juergen Klopp made it three wins from his last three matches with a 1-0 success at Rubin Kazan in Russia that left them second in Group B, two points behind Sion.
Jordon Ibe netted his first goal for Liverpool, latching on to a neat pass from Roberto Firmino to power into the penalty area and fire right-footed into the bottom corner.
It was a good night for Premier League clubs as Tottenham Hotspur beat RSC Anderlecht 2-1 to go top of Group J thanks to a stunning 87th-minute winner from Mousa Dembele.
After Anderlecht’s Imoh Ezekiel had canceled out Harry Kane’s first-half opener in the 72nd minute, Dembele fired home an unstoppable left-foot shot from outside the area.
Sion had the chance to secure an early spot in the last 32 with a win over Girondins Bordeaux, but needed a 94th-minute own-goal from Clement Chantome to snatch a 1-1 draw.
Braga were also denied an early qualification party as they suffered their first defeat in 10 games and lost their 100 percent record in Group F after a 1-0 defeat at Olympique de Marseille with Georges-Kevin N’Koudou scoring in the 39th.
Locomotive Moscow and Schalke needed wins in their games against Besiktas and Sparta Prague respectively to book spots in the next round, but both games ended in 1-1 draws.
There were high-scoring wins for Group L leaders Athletic Bilbao, who beat Partizan Belgrade 5-1, and Augsburg, who eased past AZ Alkmaar 4-1.
Raul Bobadilla grabbed a hat-trick for Augsburg, while Bilbao’s Inaki Williams netted a double for the second time in five days following Sunday’s La Liga brace against Real Betis.
Albanian side Skenderbeu pulled off a surprise 3-0 home win in Group H over Sporting Lisbon, whose cause was not helped by the sending off of ‘keeper Rui Patricio after 17 minutes.
Fiorentina’s Josip Ilicic scored twice in a 2-0 win at Lech Poznan in Group I while Roberto Soldado converted a penalty for Villarreal and then saw his shot deflected home for an own-goal by Sergei Politevich in a 2-1 win at Dinamo Minsk in Group E.
In other UEFA Europa League games, it was:
Ajax 0, Fenerbahce 0; FC Krasnodar 2, PAOK 1; Club Brugge 1, Legia Warsaw 0; Viktoria Plzen 1, Rapid Vienna 2; FC Groningen 0, Liberec 1; Rosenborg 0, Lazio 2; Saint-Etienne 3, Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk 0; Belenenses 0, FC Basel 2; FK Qarabag 1, Monaco 1; Asteras Tripoli 2, APOEL Nicosia 0; Sparta Prague 1, FC Schalke 04 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