Classy Partizan seal progress
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
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FK Partizan 2-0 FC İnter Bakı (agg: 3-1)
Partizan came through to line up an intriguing tie against Fenerbahçe SK for a group stage berth.
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İnter chance
Last week's 1-1 draw in Azerbaijan left Valentyn Khodukin's team knowing they needed to score away from home, but it was the hosts who dominated the first half. In fact, only a couple of impressive saves from goalkeeper Svilen Simeonov kept the scores level at the interval, but İnter added a little more pace to their game after the break and could have gone ahead when Makhmud Gurbanov's shot was parried away by Mladen Božović in the Partizan goal.
Open match
Gurbanov and his team-mates were made to rue that missed chance ten minutes later as the hosts finally broke the deadlock, Brazilian midfielder Liliano Roberto Antonello ending his solo run with a precise drive into the far corner from 18 metres out. That forced the Azeri champions to add numbers up front and the match opened up as a result, with İnter winger Elvin Mammadov beating a defender on 73 minutes before directing his shot over. Soon afterwards, Partizan caught their opponents on the break, as Diarra Lamina turned in a rebound with six minutes remaining after Nenad Marinković's initial attempt had come back off a post.