Russian clubs ruled the Europa League roost on Thursday as Rubin Kazan upset holders Atletico Madrid while Anzhi Makhachkala and Zenit St Petersburg opened up commanding first-leg advantages in their last 32 ties. Rubin's Gokdeniz Karadeniz scored after six minutes and Pablo Orbaiz struck deep into added time to give the Russians, who played the entire second half with 10 men after Roman Sharonov was sent off, a shock 2-0 win at Atletico.
Anzhi beat Hanover 3-1 and Zenit won 2-0 at home against five-times European Cup winners Liverpool while goals from Vladimir Darida, Frantisek Rajtoral and Stanislav Tecl helped unfancied Czechs Viktoria Plzen upset Napoli 3-0 away. Brazilian Oscar spared European champions Chelsea's blushes late on at Sparta Prague in a 1-0 victory and Gareth Bale continued his remarkable scoring form with two superb free kicks in Tottenham Hotspur's 2-1 home win over Olympique Lyon.
Hosts Inter Milan, three times European champions, beat Champions League dropouts CFR Cluj 2-0 with two goals from substitute Rodrigo Palacio. The win was soured by injury-prone forward Diego Milito lasting six minutes and crying as he left the pitch with a knee problem but fellow Argentine Palacio took his place with aplomb.
Samuel Eto'o, four-times African player of the year who has won the Champions League three times with Barcelona and Inter, was on target and missed a penalty in big-spending Anzhi's win at home to Hanover, a result which impressed coach Guus Hiddink. Chelsea, who dropped into the Europa League after being dumped out of the Champions League as holders in the group stage, flirted with a 0-0 draw until substitute Oscar's 82-minute winner shortly after coming on.
"Sparta played well which made it good. It was a strange experience and I'm glad we got that one goal at the end," said Chelsea and Czech Republic goalkeeper Petr Cech, formerly a Sparta player. Borussia Moenchengladbach and Lazio drew 3-3 in the game of the night, the Germans coming from 2-1 down to lead only for the Italians to level in the dying seconds.
There were impressive wins for Spanish club Levante, who beat runaway Greek league leaders Olympiakos Piraeus 3-0 at home and Ajax Amsterdam, 2-0 victors against former European champions Steaua Bucharest in the Netherlands. Champions League dropouts Benfica won 1-0 at German club Bayer Leverkusen, Oscar Cardozo on target for the Portuguese just after the hour while Dynamo Kiev and Girondins Bordeaux shared the honours in a 1-1 draw in Ukraine.
Belarussians BATE Borisov drew 0-0 at home with Fenerbahce, who were reduced to 10 men after four minutes when Portuguese midfielder Raul Meireles was sent off. In the later matches there was a 2-0 win for Basel over Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk while VfB Stuttgart and Newcastle United drew against Racing Genk and Ukraine's Metalist Kharkiv respectively.
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