Mighty Italian teams falter in UEFA Cup

Italian clubs, who dominated the UEFA Cup for more than a decade, faltered on Thursday with three of the four involved in the third round of this season's competition failing to win their first leg matches.

Italy's domination of the competition throughout the 1990s seemed an age away as only AC Milan emerged victorious on the night, 2-0 winners over Sporting Lisbon at the San Siro thanks to goals from Andriy Shevchenko and Filippo Inzaghi.

Inter Milan lost 1-0 at Ipswich Town, Fiorentina lost by the same scoreline at home to Lille and Parma allowed Brondby to score in the last minute to escape with a 1-1 draw.

After winning the UEFA cup eight times in 11 seasons between 1988-89 and 1998-99, no Italian club has reached the last eight for the last two seasons, and that poor record could well continue.

Milan's arch-rivals Inter -- three times UEFA Cup winners in the nineties with victories in 1991, 1994 and 1998 -- looked a shadow of those sides in their 1-0 defeat at Ipswich.

Alun Armstrong, who had come on as an Ipswich substitute in the 77th minute, headed the only goal of the game after four minutes on the pitch.

Poor Season
Fiorentina's poor season continued with a 1-0 home defeat at the hands of Lille who won with a 24th minute goal from Dagui Bakari.

Even when Fiorentina did get the ball in the net in the second half it was disallowed for offside.

Meanwhile Daniel Passarella's first European game in charge of Parma ended in disappointment after Brondby equalised with a penalty in injury time.

Parma had Junio sent off for handling Peter Madsen's header on the line, and Crister Nordin equalised from the resulting penalty.

Parma had gone ahead through a Dan Johansen goal in the first minute.

Leeds scored one of the more impressive results of the night, fighting back from a goal down to win 2-1 at Grasshoppers in Zurich with two late goals from Ian Harte (73) and Alan Smith (79). Stephane Chapuisat had put the Swiss side ahead after 17 minutes but the match turned against them in the 68th minute when Richard Nunez saw his weak penalty saved by Nigel Martyn.

DEFENCE-MINDED
A goal then would have put Grasshoppers 2-0 ahead, but instead it was Leeds who took the initiative and ended a five-match losing streak in away matches in Europe.

Valencia, beaten finalists in the last two European Cup finals, edged defence-minded Celtic 1-0 at home with a 75th minute strike from Vicente.

Celtic's arch-rivals Rangers were held to a 0-0 draw at home by Paris St Germain and the Scottish side's miserable night was completed when Fernando Ricksen was sent for a second bookable offence 11 minutes from time.

Club Bruges were the biggest winners on the night, beating Olympique Lyon 4-1 and taking their tally of UEFA Cup goals to 20 in five matches so far this season.