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Damien Duff (top) of Chelsea jumps over Jiri
Jarosik of CSKA during their Champions League group H soccer match at Lokomotiv stadium in Moscow November 2,
2004. [Agencies] |
Chelsea and Inter Milan qualified for
the round of 16 of the Champions League on Tuesday, while AC
Milan and Barcelona moved to the brink of joining them.
Arsenal, by contrast, stumbled again with a 1-1 home tie with
Panathinaikos and has drawn three games in a row.
Chelsea advanced in Group H with a 1-0 victory at CSKA Moscow. Inter's
0-0 tie with Valencia, the Spanish champion it beat 5-1 two weeks ago, was
enough to reach the next phase from Group G.
Despite the point, Valencia is now five points behind Werder Bremen,
which routed Anderlecht 5-1 thanks to a hat trick from Ivan Klasnic.
AC Milan went to Barcelona needing a tie to make sure of reaching the second
round in Group F, but went down 2-1 thanks to Ronaldinho's late strike.
Now each team has nine points and needs a point from their last two games
to reach the second round.
Watched by their Russian owner, Roman Abramovich, Chelsea made it four
wins in a row in Moscow. Dutch winger Arjen Robben finished off a slick
exchange with Eidur Gudjohnsen and Damien Duff to score the only goal of
the game in the 23rd minute.
CSKA's Vagner Love sent a penalty kick over the crossbar.
"We defended like lions to go home with another clean sheet,"
said Chelsea coach Jose Mourinho, who led FC Porto to the title last
season and whose Chelsea team has allowed just one goal in its four Group
H games. "It was a high-intensity match with two teams playing at their
highest level."
Mourinho has gone 15 Champions League games without losing, while the
club he guided to the title last season, Porto, labored to a 0-0 tie at
home with Paris Saint Germain. Porto looks like it's going out in the
first round.
Arsenal, which now is tied with Chelsea in the English Premier League,
got Thierry Henry's 16th-minute penalty kick. But after Panathinaikos'
Angelo Basinas missed a second-half penalty kick, Pascal Cygan, playing
instead of the ill Sol Campbell, scored an own
goal 16 minutes from the end in Group E.
American forward DaMarcus Beasley's goal lifted PSV Eindhoven 1-0 over
Norway's Rosenborg to keep the Dutch club atop the group by three points.
Andriy Shevchenko gave AC Milan a 17th-minute lead in Barcelona.
Cameroon striker Samuel Eto'o tied it just before half time. Ronaldinho
hit the winner with his left foot for runaway Spanish league leader
Barcelona with 2 minutes to go.
Barcelona and Milan have nine points each and Shakhtar Donetsk and
Celtic three. Celtic scored a 1-0 victory over the Ukrainian leader which had to play for the last 32 minutes with nine men after two
ejections. Alan Thompson scored the only goal in the 25th minute
after French referee Eric Poulat penalized Shakhtar goalkeeper Jan Lastuvka for holding the ball
too long.
(Agencies) |