LONDON: Miroslav Radovic scored twice to spark Polish champions Legia Warsaw into a 4-1 first-leg advantage over 10-man Celtic on Wednesday in the Champions League third qualifying round.

Zenit St Petersburg slumped to a 1-0 defeat at AEL Limassol and Azerbaijan’s Qarabag pulled off an even bigger upset when they beat Salzburg 2-1 despite finishing with nine men.

An eventful match in Warsaw saw Callum McGregor gifting Celtic an ideal start when he put the Scottish Premiership title-holders ahead on eight minutes, but the visitors’ lead was cancelled out almost immediately by Radovic.

The Serbian striker then netted his second of the evening on 36 minutes to put Legia ahead before things took a further turn for the worse for Celtic as Nigerian centre-half Efe Ambrose was dismissed for a professional foul just prior to half-time.

Two late goals from Michal Zyro and Jakub Kosecki ultimately consigned Celtic to a heavy defeat that could have been even worse had Legia captain Ivica Vrdoljak not missed a pair of second-half penalties but the stunning victory for the Polish champions left Celtic’s Champions League dreams hanging by a thread.

Salzburg, who have blasted 11 goals in their opening two league matches of the season, found life much tougher in Baku where they fell behind to a Danilo Dias goal after two minutes and had Christian Schwegler sent off just after the half hour.

The numbers were evened up when Qarabag captain Admir Teli was dismissed just before halftime after being booked twice in as many minutes.

Salzburg dominated the second half, finally equalising with a superb strike by Spaniard Jonathan Soriano in the 77th minute before hitting the bar shortly afterwards.

But Qarabag’s chances of becoming the first Azeri team to reach the group stage were given an unexpected boost when Dias’s fellow Brazilian Reynaldo took advantage of slack defending to snatch an 88th minute winner. Reynaldo was dismissed one minute later for a wild challenge.

Zenit dominated their match in Cyprus, with Danny hitting the post in the first half, but Limassol won the game with their only real chance when Lukasz Gikiewicz headed in Luciano Bebe’s cross.

The Russians had midfielder Axel Witsel sent off soon after.

Earlier, Sebastien Corchia marked his Lille debut in style with a goal and an assist to earn the French side a 2-0 win in Zurich against Grasshoppers of Switzerland.

Turkish side Besiktas beat 1970 European champions Feyenoord 2-1 in the Netherlands, while Panathinaikos, runners-up in 1971, played out a goalless draw away to Belgium’s Standard Liege.

The return legs are scheduled to be played over August 5-6 with the winners of each tie advancing to the play-off round. Results:

Third qualifying round:
First leg matches:

Wednesday:

Legia Warsaw 4 Celtic 1
NK Maribor 1 Maccabi Tel Aviv 0
AaB Aalborg 0 Dinamo Zagreb 1
Feyenoord 1 Besiktas 2
Ludogorets Razgrad 0 Partizan Belgrade 0
Standard Liege 0 Panathinaikos 0
Grasshoppers Zurich 0 Lille 2
AEL Limassol 1 Zenit St Petersburg 0
FK Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk 0 FC Copenhagen 0
HJK Helsinki 2 APOEL Nicosia 2
Qarabag Agdam 2 FC Salzburg 1
FK Aktobe 2 Steaua Bucharest 2

Tuesday:

Debrecen 1 BATE Borisov 0
SK Slovan Bratislava 2 Sheriff Tiraspol 1
Sparta Prague 4 Malmo 2

Published in Dawn, August 1st, 2014