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Rediff.com  » Sports » AC Milan, Real Madrid in quarters

AC Milan, Real Madrid in quarters

By Mike Collett
March 11, 2004 10:14 IST
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European champions AC Milan briefly flirted with elimination before crushing Sparta Prague 4-1 on Wednesday to reach the Champions League quarter-finals.

They were joined in the last eight by Real Madrid, who beat Bayern Munich 1-0 with a goal from Zinedine Zidane for a 2-1 aggregate win. Their success was marred by a flare-up between the players at the end of injury time but no-one was booked.

Bayern Munich's Ghanaian Samuel Kuffour and Real Madrid's Raul Gonzalez (L) get into a fightReal have now qualified for the last eight of the Champions League for the seventh successive season to equal Manchester United's record. United lost the chance of making it eight in a row when they were eliminated by Porto on Tuesday.

Also through from the first knockout round are Arsenal, who beat 10-man Celta Vigo 2-0 with two first half goals by Thierry Henry for a 5-2 aggregate victory.

His two goals set a new European scoring record by a French player with 39 goals -- one more than the all-time record previously held by Jean-Pierre Papin.

Celta, behind to begin with after losing the home leg 3-2, finished with 10 men after Pablo Contreras was sent off 16 minutes from time for a second bookable offence.

AS Monaco played most of their match against 10 men, beating Lokomotiv Moscow 1-0 to squeeze through on the away goals rule after losing the first leg 2-1.

Croatian Dado Prso, who scored four when Monaco beat Deportivo Coruna 8-3 in November, got Monaco's winner after 60 minutes to make amends for a first-half penalty miss.

But Lokomotiv had to play for 68 minutes one man down after their skipper Dmitry Loskov was sent off in the 22nd minute after picking up two yellow cards inside 60 seconds.

The first was for a foul on Fernando Morientes and the second after showing dissent for being booked in the first place.

Wednesday's winning quartet will go into Friday's quarter-final draw with Porto, Chelsea, Olympique Lyon and Deportivo Coruna who all qualified on Tuesday.

The draw is open, with no seeding and no restrictions on teams from the same country playing each other.

EXIT DOOR

Milan are in the draw but were briefly heading towards the exit when Sparta substitute Tomas Jun scored two minutes after coming on to put the Czechs level at 1-1 in the match -- and ahead on away goals after the 0-0 first-leg draw two weeks ago.

Milan then endured a nervous seven minutes before Andriy Shevchenko put them 2-1 up with a well taken header.

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Thirteen minutes later he made it 3-1 and Gennaro Gattuso completed the scoring five minutes from time. Filippo Inzaghi had scored Milan's opener on the stroke of halftime.

Milan coach Carlo Ancelotti said: "Any team that has got through this round deserves to be there. Maybe Arsenal represent the biggest danger but we need to be wary of all the teams".

Their old rivals Real Madrid also made it through to the last eight with a slender 1-0 win over Bayern, who won the European Cup for the fourth time in 2001 but have now failed to make the last eight for the second successive season.

The only goal at the Bernabeu arrived on 32 minutes when Zidane fired home unopposed after Michel Salgado made the most of a hesitant Bayern defence to head a deflected David Beckham pass across goal and ensure the Spanish champions earned a 2-1 aggregate victory.

The match ended with the players pushing and shoving each other but Zidane was not too bothered and walked off with a Bayern shirt draped in triumph across his shoulders.

KING HENRY

Arsenal had no problems reaching the last eight for only the second time with Henry taking his goal tally for the season to 29 as Arsenal chalked up their eighth successive win in all competitions.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, whose team, like Real Madrid are chasing a treble of domestic cup and league as well as the European Cup, was modest about the victory afterwards.

"Sometimes in football you just have to do a professional job," he said, "and this was one of those nights when we did the job."

Monaco also made it through at the expense of Moscow in a lively match in which the Russians battled all the way. But on an evening of gamesmanship, time-wasting and clumsy fouls, they also showed flashes of fine football.

Monaco badly missed the influence of injured captain Ludovic Giuly, missing with a broken foot, and contrived to waste their best openings including a penalty awarded after 18 minutes when Sergey Ovchinnikov saved Prso's shot.

Monaco finally scored after an hour when a break on the left sent Lucas Bernardi clear and his reverse pass across the penalty area was met by Prso who made up for his earlier penalty miss by steering a low left shot in at the near post.

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Mike Collett
Source: REUTERS
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