Europa League: CSKA Moscow 1 PAOK 1

CSKA Moscow became the first team the reach the last 16 of the Europa League after a 1-1 draw at home to PAOK Salonika.

CSKA, who finished second in the Russian Premier League last season, held a 1-0 lead thanks to Tomas Necid’s goal in the first leg in Thessaloniki last week.

Greek outfit PAOK drew level in the tie when they took a 1-0 lead 67 minutes into Tuesday’s return fixture at the Arena Khimki.

With the sides still level at 0-0 approaching the hour mark, CSKA replaced first-choice goalkeeper Igor Akinfeev with Sergei Zhemchugov – and the substitute caused a lengthy delay when he took all of seven minutes to ready himself.

His first action after finally coming on was to pick Zlatan Muslimovic’s opening goal out of the back of the net.

The Bosnian international striker took advantage of a weak-pass to charge down an attempted clearance by Zhemchugov and fire the ball home from 12 yards out, levelling the aggregate scores at 1-1.

The tie appeared to be heading for a shootout when PAOK’s Croatian goalkeeper Dario Kresic fouled Serbian winger Zoran Tosic inside the box.

Brazil striker Vagner Love dispatched the penalty to make it 1-1 in the match and 2-1 to CSKA on aggregate.

A second away goal would have been enough to send the Greek visitors through, but PAOK were unable to breakdown CSKA in the final ten minutes of regulation play.

The Russian hosts still had to endure six minutes of added time as a result of the Zhemchugov substitution, but they hung on to take a step closer to reaching the final for the first time since winning the competition’s predecessor – the UEFA Cup – in 2005.