Wednesday 15 February 2012

2011/12 CL Round-Up: 2nd Round 1st Leg pt1

The Champions League returned this week as the knock-out phase commenced. Favourites Barcelona will take three away goals with them for the battle at Camp Nou. Barca travelled to Germany to take on Bayer Leverkusen and took the lead five minutes before half-time through Alexis Sanchez. Michal Kadlec equalised six minutes after the restart but it was cancelled out by Sanchez's second just three minutes later. Lionel Messi put the icing on the cake with Barca's third three minutes before the end. Leverkusen have it all to do if they are to turn the 3-1 deficit around.

It'll be a little bit more tense in Cyprus when Apoel Nicosia host Lyon in their second leg. The pair are separated by just the one goal, Alexandre Lacazette giving Lyon a slight advantage 12-minutes into the second half.

It will be just as tense in Portugal, although Benfica will have two away goals to carry with them when they face Zenit St.Petersburg again. Maxi Pereira gave the visitors the lead after 20-minutes before Roman Shirokov equalised six minutes later. Sergei Semak then gave Zenit the lead with 20-minutes to go. Oscar Cardozo thought he'd rescued a point with Benfica's equaliser four minutes from time however, Shirokov returned to give Zenit the slender lead two minutes later.

Any hopes of an English winner may now fall onto Chelsea as AC Milan handed out a footballing lesson to Arsenal. The deadlock was broken in the San Siro after 14-minutes with Kevin Prince-Boateng firing a superb shot home. Robinho made it 2-0 when the ball was put on a plate by an originally offside Zlatan Ibrahimovic eight minutes before half-time. The Brazilian then added Milan's third just three minutes into the second half with Ibrahimovic finishing the job from the spot with 12-minutes remaining.    

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