Paris: Tottenham Hotspur are through to the last 16 of the Europa League after a dramatic recovery saw them get the better of 10-man Dnipro at White Hart Lane on Thursday.
After losing 0-1 in the first leg of the round of 32 tie in Ukraine last week, Spurs looked to be heading out of the tournament when Roman Zozulya headed in a delivery from visiting captain Ruslan Rotan two minutes into the second half.
That left the Premier League club needing to score three unanswered goals to go through, but a Christian Eriksen free-kick reduced the deficit on 55 minutes before Zozulya was shown a straight red card by the French referee following a headbutt on Jan Vertonghen.
Spurs made the most of their man advantage as Emmanuel Adebayor struck twice in the space of four minutes to seal a 3-1 win on the night and go through 3-2 on aggregate.
Tottenham will now face last season’s beaten finalists Benfica, who saw off PAOK of Greece, and they will do so as the only Premier League side left in the tournament after Swansea City went down 1-3 to Napoli in Italy.
Napoli will now take on 2011 Europa League winners Porto, after the Portuguese club won a remarkable tie against Eintracht Frankfurt. Following a 2-2 draw in last week’s first leg, Eintracht looked to be going through thanks to goals from Stefan Aigner and Alexander Meier either side of the interval. A double from Porto’s France international defender Eliaquim Mangala silenced the crowd of close to 50,000 in the Commerzbank Arena, only for Meier to put the hosts back in front.
But Nabil Ghilas netted four minutes from time to make it 3-3 on the night and take Porto through on away goals. Elsewhere, there will be a mouth-watering all-Italian tie between Juventus and Fiorentina after they eased past Trabzonspor and Esbjerg respectively.
