The second legs of the second preliminary round of the Europa League were played last night, reports sportal.bg. We witnessed some quite interesting matches, with three of them being decided after extra time, and one also having penalties. One of these matches was the one between Braga and Levski. "The Blues" played a very strong match in Portugal, but collapsed in extra time and lost 0:1, thus eliminating them from the tournament. In addition to the Portuguese team, AEK (Larnaca), Hecken, CFR Cluj, Utrecht, Shakhtar (Donetsk), Legia (Warsaw) and Midtjylland are also advancing.
The first team to take the step towards the third qualifying round was AEK (Larnaca), which defeated Celje 2:1 in the second leg.
CFR Cluj dramatically defeated Lugano 1:0 after extra time and will face Portuguese Braga.
Ivan Dyulgerov and his Sheriff (Tiraspol) ended their participation in the tournament ingloriously after another heavy loss to Utrecht - this time 1:4.
Shakhtar (Donetsk) also won the second leg against Besiktas 2:0 and confidently advances in the Europa League.
Most of the second leg matches from the second qualifying round were also played in the Conference League. Arda managed to eliminate the Finnish HIK after a penalty shootout and will face the Lithuanian Kauno Zalgiris in the next phase, but Cherno More was eliminated after a heavy 0:4 loss to Istanbul Basaksehir.
Janis Karabelov played one half for Partizan, and the Serbian giants defeated Oleksandria 4:0 and eliminated the Ukrainians with a total score of 6:0. The hero for the "undertakers" was the young striker Jovan Milosevic, who scored a hat-trick before the break. There were three red cards in the match.
Martin Paskalev remained a reserve for FK Sarajevo, which was eliminated after a 0:4 loss to Universitatea (Craiova). The match in Romania was evenly matched until the break, but after that the hosts scored four unanswered goals and qualified for the next round of the competition with an aggregate score of 5:2.
AZ Alkmaar defeated Finnish Ilves 5:0, after surprisingly losing 3:4 a week ago. AIK, Omonia (Nicosia), Austria (Vienna), Spartak (Trnava), Sabah, Zhytomyr, Beitar (Jerusalem), Maccabi (Haifa), Sparta (Prague) and Lausanne also recorded victories by at least three goals.
One of the surprises of the evening was the elimination of Aris. The team from Thessaloniki made up for a two-goal deficit against Azerbaijani Araz to make it 2:2, but this proved to be insufficient due to the 1:2 defeat in the first match. However, AEK continues to advance, holding 0:0 against Hapoel (Beer Sheva) in Debrecen.