LONDON: Four-time European champions Ajax missed out on the Champions League group stage after losing 4-1 to Rostov as Manchester City and Borussia Moenchengladbach eased through the playoffs on Wednesday.

Austrian champions Salzburg failed to make it through the qualifiers for an astonishing ninth time in a row, losing out to Dinamo Zagreb while FC Copenhagen completed the 32 teams for Thursday’s group stage draw in Monaco.

Rostov advanced 5-2 on aggregate over Ajax in their first season trying to qualify for the Champions League, winning comfortably in front of a delirious crowd at their compact Olimp-2 stadium with Iranian striker Sardar Azmoun, Alexander Erokhin, Ecuador midfielder Christian Noboa and Dmitry Poloz scoring the goals.

The win for Rostov comes after they humbled another famous old European name, Belgian side Anderlecht, in the third qualifying round.

City, semi-finalists last season, will play a sixth straight season in Europe’s elite competition after beating Steaua Bucharest 1-0 thanks to Fabian Delph’s 56th-minute header and completing a 6-0 win on aggregate.

Goalkeeper Joe Hart, dropped for City’s first two league games of the season, made what could be his last start for City after losing his regular place under new coach Pep Guardiola.

“We have a top manager that the club has wanted a long, long time, and he’s going to have his opinion on things,” said Hart, who was given a rousing reception by City fans and appeared emotional during and at the end of the match.

“It’s a place I love to be,” he added, “but situations occur in football. We’re men, we get on with it.”

Raffael and Thorgan Hazard both scored hat-tricks as Gladbach mauled Swiss opponents Young Boys 6-1 to complete a 9-2 aggregate win aggregate, sealing an immediate return to the group stage for the German side.

Both Germany and England will have a full quota of four teams in Thursday’s draw.

FC Copenhagen are back in the group stage for the second time in four years, after scoring an 86th-minute equaliser to draw 1-1 with APOEL Nicosia and progress 2-1 on aggregate.

Dinamo Zagreb were the last team to go through, beating Salzburg 2-1 after extra time to advance 3-2 on aggregate.

Before this season, Rostov’s only prior experience of European competition was a defeat to Trabzonspor of Turkey in the Europa League play-offs two years ago.

They finished second to champions CSKA Moscow in last season’s Russian Premier League under Kurban Berdyev, but their hopes of beating Ajax were not helped when the former Rubin Kazan coach resigned earlier this month.

However, former player Dmitri Kirichenko was named as caretaker and oversaw a 1-1 draw in Amsterdam in last week’s first leg before Rostov romped to victory in the return.

Roared on by a fervent home crowd, the Russian side took a 34th-minute through a sublime Azmoun header and Yerokhin made it 2-0 when he emphatically headed home a free kick.

Noboa bundled in a third before Dmitry Poloz sent the home fans into raptures as he beat the offside trap to make it 4-0.

Davy Klaassen scored a late consolation for Ajax from a penalty after the hosts had Fedor Kudryashov sent off.

City did the damage with a 5-0 win in Romania last week, allowing Guardiola to rest most of his first-choice players including Sergio Aguero — the scorer of a first-leg hat trick.

In an exercise in damage limitation, Steaua played with 10 men behind the ball and limited City to half chances until Jesus Navas cross for Delph to head home.

Gladbach never looked back after Hazard gave them a ninth-minute lead and two quickfire goals by his Brazilian team mate put them 3-0 ahead after just 40 minutes.

The real drama was in Salzburg where the hosts, who have dominated Austrian football since energy drinks manufacturer Red Bull took over in 2006 but never qualified for the Champions League since, faced Dinamo with a 1-1 draw in the bag from the away leg.

It seemed that this was finally to be their night when Valentino Lazaro put them ahead with a superb individual goal, running from the halfway to fire a shot inside the near post.

Dominant Salzburg had a penalty claim turned down and should have put the game to bed but, with three minutes remaining, were stunned when Chilean forward Junior Fernandes scored with a deflected shot.

Five minutes into extra-time, Fernandes sent El Arabi Hilal Soudani clear and the Algerian forward scored at the second attempt.

Cypriot champions APOEL, quarter-finalists four years ago, went ahead through Pieros Sotiriou but Federico Santander equalised for Copenhagen to take them through.

Published in Dawn, August 26th, 2016