AC Milan Impressive in Victory
Former champions AC Milan and Real Madrid put on a superb display of attacking soccer Tuesday before a sellout crowd of 75,777 at Giuseppe Meazza stadium in Milan as the European Champions League started its second round of play.
Ukrainian striker Andriy Shevchenko scored the only goal of the game in the 40th minute, taking a perfectly placed pass from Portuguese midfielder Rui Costa and firing the ball past Real Madrid goalkeeper Iker Casillas, to give Milan the 1-0 victory.
“We were beaten by a very strong Milan side,” said Real Coach Vicente Del Bosque, who led Madrid to the title last season. “Milan attacked us at the start, but we responded in the right way. It was a beautiful game between two great sides.”
Meanwhile, Borussia Dortmund and Manchester United scored impressive road victories in Russia and Switzerland, respectively, while Juventus fought back to earn a tie with Deportivo La Coruna in Spain.
Borussia, which won the German Bundesliga title last season, fell behind Lokomotiv Moscow on a 31st-minute goal by Sergei Ignasevich but pulled even two minutes later when Torsten Frings took advantage of slack defending. Jan Koller scored the winner in the 43rd minute as Borussia prevailed, 2-1, in front of 20,000 in Moscow.
Manchester United was surprised by Basel when the Swiss team took the lead after only 31 seconds on a goal by Argentine striker Christian Gimenez and only in the second half was the English club able to gain control.
Two goals within a minute by Dutch forward Ruud van Nistelrooy in the 61st and 62nd minutes and a third by Norwegian striker Ole Gunnar Solskjaer off a Van Nistelrooy pass in the 68th minute were enough to give Manchester a 3-1 victory before 29,501 in Basel, Switzerland.
In La Coruna, Spain, meanwhile, Deportivo jumped to a 2-0 lead on goals by Diego Tristan and Dutchman Roy Makaay in the first 12 minutes, to the delight of its 30,000 fans, but then allowed Juventus back into the match and had to settle for a 2-2 tie.
“The only problem was that we started the game 20 minutes too late,” said Juventus Coach Marcello Lippi after the Italian champions had rallied on goals by Alessandro Birindelli in the 38th minute and Czech midfielder Pavel Nedved in the 57th.
Zagallo in Hospital
Mario “Lobo” Zagallo, a four-time World Cup winner for Brazil as a player and coach, was reported to be “doing well” at the Hospital Samaritano in Rio de Janeiro after being admitted for tests because of an irregular heartbeat.
Zagallo, 71, who won the World Cup as a player in 1958 and 1962, as coach in 1970 and as technical director in 1994, was tossed into the air by Brazil’s players last week as they celebrated a 3-2 come-from-behind victory over South Korea in Seoul in a game in which Zagallo served as Brazil’s interim coach.
Riquelme Secured
Barcelona exercised its option and completed the purchase of Argentine national team midfielder Juan Roman Riquelme by paying his former club, Boca Juniors, an additional $5 million.
The Spanish team had acquired a part-interest in Riquelme, 24, for $6 million in July, but now owns the playmaker outright.
Hong Kong Betting
Hong Kong voted to legalize betting on soccer games in an effort to raise $128 to $640 million a year in tax revenue and also to put illegal gambling operations out of business.
The right to operate a soccer betting system was awarded to the Hong Kong Jockey Club, which controls horse racing in the former British colony. Among Asian nations, Macau, Singapore and China also permit some form of soccer wagering.
