UEFA Champions League Play-Offs roundup - AC Milan, PSV play out a draw, Celtic suffer defeat

The UEFA Champions League is back on tv, with the 3^rd qualification round taking place today. There were some big teams involved tonight, and here’s a quick roundup of the results.

Celtic travelled to Kazakhstan to play a relatively unknown Shakhter Karagandy, who performed a very odd ritual which they hoped will help them defeat their much fancied opponents. In what was perhaps the upset of the night, the Kazakh team beat the Scottish champions 2-0, making a strong case to make their debut in the group stages. Barring a really strong performance in the return leg, it looks like Celtic have lost their opportunity to get Champions League this season.

Lyon took on Real Sociedad at home, but could not muster a good enough performance, falling to a 2-0 defeat. Now they have the unenviable task of having to score at least 2 goals in an away game and keep a clean sheet to have any chance of progressing to the group stages. Added to this, Milan Bisevac managed to get himself red carded, making the job that much more difficult.

Zenit St Petersburg defeated P. Ferreira 4-1, and ensured that they would make it to the group stages with ease, especially after accumulating 4 away goals. Roman Shirokov scored a hattrick while the other was an own goal by Degra. Andre Leao was the only scored for P. Ferreira.

AC Milan travelled to the Netherlands to take on PSV Eindhoven in what was the biggest match of the night. Both teams gave it their best, therefore making the draw a fair result. But the scoreline of 1-1 would be more in favour of Milan as they have the precious away goal to take back to Italy. Stephan El Shaarawy scored for Milan while it was Tim Matavz who equalised for PSV.

Viktoria Plzen beat Maribor by a scoreline of 3-1.