Europa League: West Ham & AC Milan cruise into quarters; Bayer Leverkusen narrowly avoid shock exit
West Ham United are into a major European quarter-final for the third season running following Thursday night’s emphatic Europa League thrashing of Freiburg at the London Stadium.
David Moyes’ Hammers went into the second leg of their last 16 tie trailing 1- on aggregate but made light work of the task in overturning that deficit on home soil.
Lucas Paqueta cancelled out Freiburg’s advantage inside nine minutes, before Jarrod Bowen put West Ham ahead in the tie later in the first half. Aaron Cresswell put further daylight between the sides soon after the half-time interval, with a late Mohammed Kudus brace putting the icing on the cake for last season’s Europa Conference League champions.
They are joined in Friday’s quarter-final draw by Premier League compatriots Liverpool, whose 6-1 annihilation of Sparta Prague at Anfield added to a 5-1 win in the Czech capital a week ago and totalled an 11-2 aggregate win over the two legs. Mohamed Salah made Reds goalscoring history.
Brighton & Hove Albion didn’t have the same outcome in their last 16 tie, despite winning against Roma their first ever European home knockout game. Danny Welbeck’s goal at the Amex Stadium was not enough to dent Roma’s commanding 4-0 lead from the reverse leg in Italy.
AC Milan played 70 minutes of their second leg against Slavia Prague with a player advantage after Tomas Holes was sent off. The Rossoneri made the most of it, scoring three times in the first half alone through Christian Pulisic, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Rafael Leao. By the time, Matej Jurasek pulled one back for Slavia near the end, Milan had long been thinking about the quarters.
For a team that is ten points clear of Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga table, Bayer Leverkusen had a battle on
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