Ajax Out Again — 3rd Round Qualifying Results

The third qual­i­fy­ing round com­pleted on Tues­day and Wednes­day (except for the post­poned AEK Athens — Sevilla match) and there were few shock­ing results except for the ouster of Ajax by SK Slavia Praha. This will be a major dis­ap­point­ment for Ajax as they lost to FC Køben­havn in the third qual­i­fy­ing round a year ago. Stanislav Vl?ek (pic­tured below on the left) was the hero for Slavia scor­ing twice to pro­pel the Czech side into the group stage for the first time in their his­tory. Ajax will drop in to the Uefa Cup, which we will talk about later this week.

Rosen­borg BK beat Tam­pere United 2–0 (5–0 aggre­gate) to enter the group stage for the eleventh time. On a per­sonal note, it’ll be nice to see Cana­dian goal­keeper Lars Hirschfeld play­ing on the big stage. Hirschfield, who also holds a Ger­man cit­i­zen­ship, seems to have found a home in Nor­way after fail­ing to get a shot at Tot­ten­ham and sev­eral other clubs. Dur­ing his time in Nor­way, first with Tromso IL and now Rosen­borg, he has dis­played the form that saw him named the best goal­keeper of the 2002 Gold Cup tour­na­ment, after allow­ing only four goals in five matches. He turns 30 this Octo­ber and should have many fine sea­sons ahead of him.

Speak­ing of goal­keep­ers, Celtic FC needed some hero­ics from theirs to make it through. Artur Boruc denied FC Spar­tak Moskva’s Maxym Kalyny­chenko at the end of the penalty shoot-out to take the Scot­tish title-holders into the group stage. Their 2nd leg ended just as the first had in a 1–1 draw, which forced extra-time. Spartak’s Kalyny­chenko almost won it in the sec­ond period of extra-time only to be denied by Boruc before Jan Ven­ne­goor of Hes­selink struck his penalty-kick against the bar with five min­utes left to play after Radoslav Ková? was judged to have han­dled the ball in the penalty area. Celtic will look to improve on last sea­son, as they lost to AC Milan in the first knock­out round.

In a match marred by crowd clashes, Mateja Kez­man and Brazil­ian mid­fielder Alex were on tar­get for Fener­bahce as they denied Andr­elecht a place in the group stage for the first time in five years. Ander­lecht will now be part of Friday’s UEFA Cup draw. Bel­gian police had to inter­vene after fans from both clubs clashed in the 80th minute and the game was stopped for sev­eral min­utes after Ander­lecht fans attempted to jump over fenc­ing divid­ing them and vis­it­ing fans.

Arse­nal, on the strength of goals from Tomas Rosicky, Cesc Fab­re­gas and Eduardo da Silva, eased through the sec­ond leg of their tie 3–0, for a 5–0 aggre­gate tri­umph over Sparta Prague. Rosicky, in what most of have been a bit­ter­sweet moment, scored against his for­mer club after eight min­utes but it was not until the final 10 min­utes that Arse­nal added two more to seal the victory.

Shakhtar Donetsk came within three min­utes of elim­i­na­tion before Brazil­ian mid­fielder Brandão struck to cap a mas­sive come­back against FC Salzburg. Already trail­ing 1–0 from the match in Salzburg, Donetsk fell behind a goal before storm­ing back to score three unas­nwered goals and clinch a place in the group stage.

In other scores from Wednes­day:
Valen­cia defeated Elfs­borg 2–1 (Valen­cia advance 5–1)
Ben­fica defeated FC Køben­havn 1–0 to secure a 3–1 aggre­gate vic­tory
Werder Bre­men held off Dinamo Zagreb 3–2 and won 5–3 on aggre­gate
Dynamo Kyiv eased past FK Sara­jevo 3–0 (4–0 on aggre­gate)
Be?ikta? JK booked their place in the group stages with a 2–0 (3–1 aggre­gate) tri­umph against the Swiss cham­pi­ons FC Zürich.
FC Steaua Bucure?ti secured a 2–0 (4–2 aggre­gate) win against FC BATE Borisov

In Tuesday’s matches, Liv­er­pool cruised to a 4–0 home win over Toulouse, which saw them advance com­fort­ably 5–0 on aggre­gate. Peter Crouch, Sami Hyypia and Dirk Kuyt with a brace, accounted for the Liv­er­pool goals. Both Dirk Kuyt and Yossi Benay­oun were impres­sive in the vic­tory though the effort from the entire squad was strong.

Celtic’s cross-town rivals, Rangers, scrapped out a score­less draw against Crvena Zvezda to main­tain their 1–0 aggre­gate lead. Ital­ian club Lazio staged an impres­sive come­back after falling behind 1–0 to Dinamo Bucharesti. Florin Bratu poached a goal for Bucharesti in the 27th minute and the score remained that way until the sec­ond half. Lazio turned on the style in the sec­ond half and a brace from Tom­maso Roc­chi and another goal from Goran Pan­dev saw them over­turn the 2–1 aggre­gate to advance.