Italian champions Juventus proved too strong for a spirited Olympique Lyonnais in the UEFA Europa League quarter-finals on Thursday, while Sevilla, Valencia and last season’s runners-up SL Benfica also clinched their places in the last four.
Juve’s main focus is on retaining the Serie A title, but Antonio Conte’s side are also desperate to reach a Europa League final that is to be played in their own stadium in Turin on May 14 and a 2-1 win against Lyon on Thursday took them into the semi-finals 3-1 on aggregate.
Benfica, who suffered an agonizing 2-1 defeat to Chelsea in last season’s final in Amsterdam, beat Dutch side AZ 2-0 to go through 3-0 on aggregate, while Sevilla recovered from a 1-0 first-leg defeat away to Porto, beating the Portuguese side 4-1 in the return at the Sanchez Pizjuan.
Photo: AFP
Valencia recovered from a 3-0 first-leg loss to Basel, winning 5-0 after extra-time at the Estadio Mestalla to progress.
Unbeaten at home this season and leading 1-0 from last week’s first leg in France, Juve got off to a superb start at a packed Juventus Stadium when veteran Andrea Pirlo curled home a typically brilliant free-kick inside four minutes.
Lyon, who were missing a host of key players due to injury, showed great spirit to level the score on the night when Jimmy Briand headed in off a post in the 18th minute and suddenly OL knew that one goal would be enough to take them through.
Photo: AFP
However, with former Juve player and coach, and current France boss, Didier Deschamps watching on from the stands, Carlos Tevez had a headed effort disallowed for offside just after the hour mark, before a Claudio Marchisio strike that took a huge deflection off Samuel Umtiti wrong-footed goalkeeper Anthony Lopes and effectively ended Lyon’s dreams.
“We deserved to go through. We are pleased to have taken Juve through to a European semi-final for the first time since 2003,” said Conte, who admitted the win was hard-earned. “We have a lot of respect for Lyon. I said to the players at halftime that if they thought it was going to be easy they were wrong. You can’t think that you will frighten the opposition just because you are Juve.”
Having fallen just short in the Portuguese league and Cup, as well as the Europa League 12 months ago, Benfica are still on course to win all three competitions this time around.
Photo: AFP
Seven points clear in their domestic league with four games to go and through to the last four of the Taca de Portugal, Benfica are also into the last four in the Europa League after Spanish striker Rodrigo bagged a brace at the Estadio da Luz to clinch a comfortable aggregate win against AZ.
Benfica’s bitter rivals Porto are out, though, after a first-half collapse in southern Spain.
An early Ivan Rakitic penalty leveled the scores on aggregate and further goals by Vitolo and Colombian striker Carlos Bacca had Sevilla — UEFA Cup winners in 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 — 3-0 up on the night.
The sending off of Coke early in the second half had little impact on the hosts and substitute Kevin Gameiro got their fourth goal late on.
There was still time for Ricardo Quaresma to pull a goal back for the visitors, but Porto exited the competition in the same city where they won the UEFA Cup in 2002-2003 by beating Celtic.
There will be two Spanish sides in the semi-finals after Valencia went through in even more dramatic circumstances.
The 2003-2004 UEFA Cup winners lost 3-0 to Basel in last week’s first leg in Switzerland, but two goals from Paco Alcacer either side of an Eduardo Vargas header made it 3-0 to the hosts at the Mestalla and took the tie to extra-time.
The visitors then had Marcelo Diaz and Gaston Sauro sent off and crumbled with nine men, Alcacer completing his hat-trick, before Juan Bernat sealed a memorable 5-0 triumph on the night.
The next generation of running talent takes center stage at today’s Berlin Marathon, in the absence of stars including Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge and Ethiopian world record holder Tigist Assefa. With most of the major marathon stars skipping the event in the wake of the Paris Olympics just more than a month ago, the field is wide open in the men’s and women’s races. Since 2015, Kipchoge has won five times in Berlin, Kenenisa Bekele has won twice and Guye Adola once — with all three missing today. Kenyan Kibiwott Kandie and Ethiopian Tadese Takele are among the favourites for the men, while
Zhang Shuai yesterday said that she nearly quit after losing 24 matches in a row — now the world No. 595 is into the quarter-finals of her home China Open. The 35-year-old is to face Spain’s Paula Badosa as the lowest-ranked player to reach this stage in the history of the tournament after Badosa reeled off 11 of the last 12 games in a 6-4, 6-0 victory over US Open finalist Jessica Pegula. Zhang went into Beijing on a barren run lasting more than 600 days and her string of singles defeats was the second-longest on the WTA Tour Open era, which
Taiwan’s Tony Wu yesterday beat Mackenzie McDonald of the US to win the Nonthaburi Challenger IV in Thailand, his first challenger victory since 2022. The 26-year-old world No. 315, who won both his qualifiers to advance to the main draw, has been on a hot streak this month, winning his past nine matches, including two that ensured Taiwan’s victory in their Davis Cup World Group I tie. Wu took just more than two hours to top world No. 172 McDonald 6-3, 7-6 (7/4) to win his second challenger tournament since the Tallahassee Tennis Challenger in 2022. Wu’s Tallahassee win followed two years of
Taiwanese martial artists bagged one gold, four silver and three bronze medals at the World Junior Wushu Championships in Brunei, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Brunei Darussalam said yesterday. Liu Yu-tzu won the gold medal in the girl’s taijiquan A group and also picked up a silver medal in the girl’s taijijian A group. Hu Hsin-ling, Yu Min-hsun and Chen Chao-hsiang each won a silver medal in the girl’s jianshu B, boy’s nangun B and boy’s taijijian A groups respectively. Hu also won a bronze medal in the girl’s qiangshu B group, while Yu and Lin Shih-hung picked up bronze medals
RSS