Turkish trauma for Barcelona
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Your support makes all the difference.The Turkish side Besiktas produced a huge upset last night when they beat a lacklustre Barcelona 3-0 in the Champions' League in Istanbul.
The Turkish side Besiktas produced a huge upset last night when they beat a lacklustre Barcelona 3-0 in the Champions' League in Istanbul.
Ahmet Dursun scored twice to give the Turks their first win in this season's competition against the Group H favourites, who had thumped Leeds United 4-0 in their opening game.
Ahmet put the Turks ahead in the 37th minute when he latched on to a cross from Nihat Kahveci. He scored again in the 74th minute, lobbing the Barcelona goalkeeper Richard Dutruel after a swift Besiktas counter-attack.
The French striker Pascal Nouma, formerly of Lens, put the finishing touch to the Turkish victory in the 87th minute with a deflected goal that bounced just over the line.
"Barcelona are the best club in the world, I think. By beating them we've shown we are not that far behind and that we are the same class of side," Ahmet said.
Barcelona enjoyed long stretches of possession but proved unable to penetrate a packed and often scrambling Besiktas defence and the safe hands of their Nigerian goalkeeper Ike Shorunmu.
In Group G, Manchester United's section, a deflected free-kick in the dying minutes gave the Belgian champions Anderlecht a slightly fortunate 1-0 victory over the Dutch side PSV Eindhoven in Brussels.
With the game seemingly petering out towards an uninspiring 0-0 draw, the defender Didier Dheedene's free-kick from just outside the box rebounded off PSV's Theo Lucius and left the Dutch goalkeeper Ronald Waterreus stranded. "Perhaps we were a bit lucky tonight, but that's life," said Anderlecht's veteran captain, Lorenzo Staelens.
A game short of imagination and creativity suddenly came to life late on, and PSV came close to equalising in the final minute of normal time when their captain Mark van Bommel shot just wide with only the Anderlecht goalkeeper Filip de Wilde to beat.
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