ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Substitute Alfa Semedo rescued 10-man Benfica with a late goal to secure a 3-2 win over AEK Athens on Tuesday as the Greek champion was punished for chaotic defending with a second straight Champions League defeat.
AEK had come from two goals down to level the match after Ruben Dias was sent off just before the break. But Semedo was left unchallenged and ran through the static AEK defense to fire past goalkeeper Vasilis Barkas in the 74th minute at Athens’ Olympic Stadium.
“I came on to help the team and I’m so happy to get that goal,” Semedo said. “The coach (Rui Vitoria) told me to support the counterattacks.”
Benfica looked to have wrapped up the Group E match early, scoring twice in the opening 15 minutes.
Haris Seferovic tapped in the opener in the sixth minute after AEK goalkeeper Vasilis Barkas blocked a shot from Gedson Fernandez. The Portuguese side looked threatening on every push forward and added another nine minutes later when the unmarked Alex Grimaldo headed in a free kick from Pizzi.
But the visitors lost control after Dias received a second booking for a foul on Ezequiel Ponce.
Viktor Klonaridis scored twice in the second half but missed a clear chance for the winner moments before Semedo’s goal.
“I wanted to get a third goal,” Klonaridis said. “The truth is when you score that boosts your confidence to score more. But I made the wrong decision at that moment.”
AEK lost its opening game 3-0 at Ajax, and showed little imagination before the break, while center-back duo Marios Oikonomou and Dmytro Chygrynskiy struggled to contain Benfica’s three forwards.
“We started out looking scared and there’s no real explanation for that,” AEK coach Marinos Ouzounidis said. “When they went down to 10 men, we reacted well and should have won it. That third goal came after we had worked so hard. It was very unfortunate,”
Bayern and Ajax drew 1-1 in the group’s other game on Tuesday.
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MANCHESTER, England (AP) — Manchester United’s players got stuck in traffic and never really got going on the field, either, in a 0-0 draw with Valencia in the Champions League on Tuesday.
Kickoff was delayed by five minutes because United’s team bus encountered heavy traffic on the way to the ground. The bus arrived just 45 minutes before the scheduled start time of the Group H game.
Coach Jose Mourinho said United was late because police “refused” to give the team bus an escort.
“We left the hotel at 6 o’clock, hopeful that 30 minutes would be enough, which it normally is,” Mourinho said. “The police refused to do an escort so we came by ourselves. It took 75 minutes from the hotel.
“The referee was nice to allow us to start the game five minute late.”
United has a history of turning up late for matches — they have done so a number of times in the Premier League, including for back-to-back matches in London against Tottenham and then West Ham in 2016.
This time, though, it was for a home game and the incident could be viewed by critics as symptomatic of the commotion engulfing England’s biggest team amid its struggles under Mourinho.
After a week when United lost to both second-tier Derby County in the English League Cup and then West Ham in the Premier League, Mourinho was looking for a reaction from his players and said before the match that “it’s time for the people on the pitch to show them that they love the club as much as the fans.”
He didn’t really get one.
“We have to stand tall. We’re going through a tough patch and we’re the only ones who can turn it around,” United defender Chris Smalling said. “The dressing room is united. We’re sticking together to make sure we turn it around.”
A late rally failed to yield a goal that would have secured a second straight win for United in group play. The English club is in second place on four points, two behind Juventus which heads to Old Trafford for the teams’ third match in three weeks.
Even if the desire was there for United, the quality was lacking. One moment late in the first half summed up the paucity of attacking quality: Eric Bailly, United’s center back, chested down a loose ball, took a quick look around then tried a highly ambitious effort from 45 meters that unsurprisingly looped well wide of goal.
Valencia looked more dangerous and sprightly going forward, especially down the left and in behind United right back Antonio Valencia, but didn’t have the cutting edge to match its build-up play.
Familiar cries of “attack, attack, attack” came from United supporters at the start of the second half, and the home team did pile on the pressure in the final half-hour with Romelu Lukaku having a curling effort turned aside and Valencia’s defenders producing last-gasp challenges to block close-range shots.
In the 85th minute, Marcus Rashford — United’s best attacker on the night — sent in a fiercely struck free kick that crashed against the crossbar and bounced away from danger.
Lukaku wasted United’s final chance, heading over at a corner.
“The players tried. They raised the level of their efforts,” Mourinho said. “They raised the level of their intensity in spite of the fact we don’t have many with that intensity.”
“Our attacking players,” he added, “aren’t in their best moments of confidence and individual level.”
Valencia earned its first point of group play and is in third place.
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ROME (AP) — Edin Dzeko can’t stop scoring against Viktoria Plzen.
The Bosnia and Herzegovina striker netted a hat trick to raise his tally to nine goals in eight matches against the Czech side as Roma revived its Champions League campaign with a 5-0 rout on Tuesday.
“I know them well,” a grinning Dzeko said. “I have played against them in the Czech Republic before.”
Turkey winger Cengiz Under added another for Roma — having previously hit the crossbar — and 19-year-old forward Justin Kluivert also knocked in a rebound.
In the Europa League two years ago, Dzeko scored a hat trick for Roma against Plzen. He also got two against Plzen in the Champions League while with Manchester City in the 2013-14 group phase. His other goals against Plzen came when Dzeko played in the Czech Republic for Teplice from 2005-07.
A surprise semifinalist last season, Roma is building confidence after its emotional 3-1 win over Lazio in the Rome derby on Saturday.
Having been thoroughly outclassed by three-time defending champion Real Madrid in the Group G opener, Roma is back in the battle for the knockout rounds.
CSKA Moscow, which beat Madrid 1-0 in Tuesday’s other group match, leads with four points. Roma and Madrid have three points each and Plzen is last with one.
“We’re still nowhere close to our maximum potential,” Dzeko said.
Dzeko can speak Czech fluently and he was quick to seize upon holes in Plzen’s defense.
The first goal came when Dzeko was set up by Aleksandar Kolarov to beat the offside trap three minutes in, enabling the Roma No. 9 to place a shot in the far bottom corner.
Under, Roma’s 21-year-old winger, rocked the goalframe with a long shot near the half-hour mark and Kluivert then protested to no avail for a penalty when the ball appeared to go off a defender’s arm.
Before the break, Dzeko scored his second with an expert chest control and half volley from close range following a cross from Under. He nearly had another later on but goalkeeper Matus Kozacik denied him with his boot.
Under scored with an angled shot after being set up by Lorenzo Pellegrini, who maintained his exceptional form from the derby.
Pellegrini also helped set up Roma’s fourth goal with a cross-field pass to Under, whose shot was palmed away by Kozacik into the path of the waiting Kluivert.
Kluivert — the son of former Netherlands standout Patrick Kluivert — became the youngest Roma player to score in the Champions League.
After Kluivert scored, he held up a shirt featuring the name of former Ajax teammate Abdelhak Nouri, who recently emerged from a year-long coma.
Dzeko completed his hat trick in stoppage time by rising above the defense for a header from a corner.
Dzeko has now scored eight goals in his last seven Champions League appearances; ending a six-match scoreless streak in all competitions.
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WORLD SCORES: COURTESY OF LIVESCORE.COM
