PARIS: First, the Premier League title. Now, the Champions League quarter-finals.

Is there no end to Leicester City’s football fairytale? The improbable rise of a previously unheralded club from central England touched new heights on Tuesday when Leicester beat Sevilla 2-0 to reach the last eight of Europe’s elite club competition, courtesy of a 3-2 aggregate victory.

Two years ago to the day, Leicester were in last place in the Premier League after a dour 0-0 home draw with Hull City.

On Friday, their name will be in a pot alongside the cream of the continent Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Juventus and two others in the Champions League draw in Nyon.

Juve coasted into the quarter-finals with a 1-0 win over Porto in Turin after a first-half penalty and red card ended the Portuguese side’s lingering hopes of a comeback.

Paulo Dybala converted the penalty three minutes before the break to complete a 3-0 aggregate win for the Serie A side after Porto defender Maximiliano Pereira blocked Gonzalo Higuain’s goalbound shot with his arm and was sent off.

“We proved a lot of people wrong and pulled off the impossible again,” said Leicester captain Wes Morgan, one of the scorers inside their atmospheric King Power Stadium. “We will take whoever comes.”

That’s the kind of uncompromising attitude that carried Leicester to the Premier League title last season at odds of 5,000-1 and is sweeping the team to another potential miracle.

No team is likely to feel comfortable in the cauldron that is the King Power Stadium on nights like these and Juve captain Gianluigi Buffon said he was keen to avoid Leicester in the next round.

“Let slip the dogs of war,” urged a message on a giant banner behind one of the goals before the match. It was a line from ‘Julius Caesar’, a play by William Shakespeare the English playwright who has the same surname as Leicester’s new manager.

Craig Shakespeare recently took over from Claudio Ranieri, the coach who orchestrated Leicester’s sensational Premier League title triumph but was fired because the team had found itself fighting a relegation battle in its championship defence.

Shakespeare has three wins from three matches in charge, and has got the team playing back at last season’s levels.

“We tried to make it as uncomfortable as we could for Sevilla,” said Shakespeare, who was pictured on that banner holding a dog on a leash.

Down 2-1 from the first leg last month in Spain, Leicester took the lead in the 27th minute when Riyad Mahrez curled in a free kick that Morgan turned home at the back post.

Winger Marc Albrighton doubled the lead in the 54th and put Leicester clear on aggregate by lashing home left-footed from just inside the area after Sevilla defender Adil Rami made a poor headed clearance.

Europa League aristocrats Sevilla’s dream of a first appearance in the Champions League quarter-finals turned sour as Samir Nasri was sent off for aiming a headbutt at Jamie Vardy shortly before Steven N’Zonzi’s 80th-minute penalty was saved by Leicester keeper Kasper Schmeichel.

The Dane, whose father and former Champions League winner Peter was watching inside the stadium, also saved a penalty in the first leg in which a dominant Sevilla could have won by a landslide.

“It is an unbelievable achievement for the club. I am proud of the boys and proud of everybody. We had a game plan, we stuck to it and it came off perfectly,” Schmeichel, who made two other important saves, said.

At the Juventus Stadium, Porto’s bid ended when right-back Pereira saw red five minutes before the break.

Romanian referee Ovidiu Hategan pointed to the spot and a day after he said it was his “dream” to score past veteran goalkeeper Iker Casillas, Argentinian playmaker Dybala drilled his shot into the bottom-right corner.

The defeat put a dampener an historic evening for Casillas who made a record 175th appearance in European competition, overhauling Paulo Maldini’s total.

The Italians never looked like relinquishing their 2-0 lead from the first leg of the last 16 tie in Portugal three weeks ago when Porto also played the second half with 10 men after Alex Telles was dismissed for two bookable offences.

“There will always be a doubt as to whether it would have been different with eleven players,” said Porto coach Nuno Espirito Santo. “It’s not right for a team to be penalised twice, first with a penalty and then a red card.”

Juve coach Massimiliano Allegri was not entirely satisfied and warned his side must improve, whoever they are drawn against in the last eight.

“We’ll need a different kind of performance when we come up against better sides,” he said. “We need to improve the quality of our football which in the second half left a lot to be desired.”

Published in Dawn, March 16th, 2017