LEVERKUSEN
\nBayer Leverkusen are through to the last 16 of the Champions League after a scoreless home draw with Olympiacos on Tuesday, winning their play-off round tie 2-0 on aggregate.
\nLeverkusen were below their best but did just enough to qualify after last week\u2019s comfortable first-leg win in Greece.
\nIt was the first time Leverkusen made it through a two-legged Champions League knockout tie since they reached the final in 2002, when they lost 2-1 to Real Madrid.
\nThe 2024 German double winners will face either Premier League leaders Arsenal or German champions Bayern Munich, who eliminated Leverkusen at the last 16 stage last season.
\n\u201cThe game didn\u2019t go at all like we\u2019d imagined. Too sluggish \u2014 really the only positive is that we kept a clean sheet and we\u2019re through to the next round,\u201d a frustrated Leverkusen captain Robert Andrich told Amazon Prime.
\n\u201cWe needed more speed, more bite, both against the ball and with it \u2014 thankfully the opponent didn\u2019t punish us.\u201d
\nEchoing his captain, Leverkusen midfielder Jonas Hofmann said coach Kasper Hjulmand \u201cwill probably go home and drink a beer out of frustration to wash down that performance. There\u2019s nobody here who can be satisfied with that\u201d.
\nLeverkusen had not conceded at home in any competition since early January and were rarely troubled by the energetic but toothless Greek champions.
\nOlympiacos rested six starters in their Greek Super League match on Saturday in the hopes of reaching the Champions League last 16 for the first time since 2013-14, when they were narrowly eliminated by Manchester United.
\nSeeking to give his troops a little extra motivation, billionaire Olympiacos owner Evangelos Marinakis \u2014 who also owns Nottingham Forest \u2014 promised an \u201cunprecedented\u201d financial bonus for reaching the last 16.
\nPatrik Schick scored twice in three minutes in last week\u2019s opening leg and the Czech striker was in the thick of things early on, heading just wide and dragging a lob over goalkeeper Konstantinos Tzolakis but past the far post inside six minutes.
\nAfter that early flurry, Leverkusen were content to sit back as the match wore on, forcing the visitors to try and create something.
\nLeverkusen\u2019s best chance of the match came midway through the second half when Alejandro Grimaldo blasted a shot against the crossbar with Tzolakis beaten.
\nRight-back Lucas Vazquez, a Champions League winner with Real Madrid, limped off late in the second half in the only black mark for the hosts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LEVERKUSEN Bayer Leverkusen are through to the last 16 of the Champions League after a scoreless home draw with Olympiacos on Tuesday, winning their play-off round tie 2-0 on aggregate. Leverkusen were below their best but did just enough to qualify after last week\u2019s comfortable first-leg win in Greece. It was the first time Leverkusen …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":94290,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94265"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94293,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94265\/revisions\/94293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}