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| April 13, 2002 | Saturday | Muharram 29, 1423 |
Dortmund face Feyenoord in UEFA Cup final
LONDON, April 12: Borussia Dortmund will play Feyenoord in next month’s UEFA Cup final after both sides survived heart-stopping endings to their semifinal second leg ties on Thursday.
Dortmund, European champions in 1997, lost 3-1 to AC Milan at the San Siro but won 5-3 on aggregate after the 4-0 drubbing they handed out in Germany last week.
Feyenoord, who had beaten Inter Milan 1-0 at the San Siro stadium the Italians share in the first leg, salvaged a 2-2 draw on Thursday after Inter struck twice in the last 10 minutes.
The final will be played at Feyenoord’s De Kuip stadium on May 8 in Rotterdam.
The night was yet another bitter disappointment for Italian football, which had enjoyed an enviable track record in this competition in the 1990s, when Inter alone won it three times.
Milan and Inter put on spirited rallies on Thursday, especially in the closing minutes, but both ultimately paid the price for mistakes made in last week’s first legs.
Milan came closest to causing an upset, despite having a mountain to climb after Marcio Amoroso, Serie A’s top scorer in 1999 with Udinese, had scored a first-leg hat-trick in Dortmund.
A header from Filippo Inzaghi and a shot from Cosmin Contra, after a punched clearance from Dortmund’s former AC Milan goalkeeper Jens Lehmann, gave the five-times European champions a 2-0 lead in the opening 20 minutes.
The German side then dug in to deny Milan a third until the last minute, when Serginho converted a penalty.
But hopes among the home crowd of a memorable upset were dashed in injury-time, when Lars Ricken struck to earn Dortmund a place in the final and a chance of gaining their first UEFA Cup success.
Feyenoord will be bidding to repeat their 1974 UEFA Cup triumph over Tottenham Hotspur — coincidentally also secured in Rotterdam with a 2-0 second leg win.
They reached the final this time after surviving a similarly nail-biting ending to their clash with Hector Cuper’s Inter.
Ronaldo played his first game for the Italian league leaders since being injured in December, but the former twice World Player of the Year failed to find the target, while a makeshift defence was exposed at the other end.
Pierre Van Hooijdonk headed the Dutch into a 16th minute lead and Jon Dahl Tomasson followed up with a second in the 34th.
Cristiano Zanetti scored what looked like Inter’s consolation goal six minutes from time, only for their substitute Mohamed Kallon to convert a stoppage-time penalty.
But the efforts all came too late to save Cuper, who had guided Valencia to the last two Champions League finals before moving to Lombardy.
The defeats for Inter and Milan also follow Italy’s failure for the second consecutive year to get a team into the last eight of the Champions League.
Semifinals (second leg collated results): Feyenoord 2 Inter Milan 2
First leg: 1-0; Feyenoord win 3-2 on agrregate
AC Milan 3 Dortmund 1
First leg: 0-4; Borussia Dortmund win 5-3 on aggregate
Final - Feyenoord v Borussia Dortmund, Rotterdam, May 8.—Reuters
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