Petrolul Ploiesti 2-1 Swansea: Swans advance

Swansea's strong performance in the 1st leg was enough to see them through. Picture: Getty

SWANSEA went down to a disappointing 2-1 defeat in Romania but still advanced to the group stage of the Europa League at the expense of Petrolul Ploiesti.

Aggregate: 3-6

Scorers: Petrolul Ploiesti - Priso 73, Younes 83; Swansea City - Lamah 74

The Welsh club held a 5-1 lead after the first leg of this play-off tie last week. The hosts never looked capable of turning the contest on its head but they did take the lead on the night through Njongo Priso’s 73rd-minute strike.

Substitute Roland Lamah responded instantly, but Hamza Younes headed home the winner for the hosts before Swansea captain Leon Britton was sent off late on.

Swansea can now look forward to at least another six games in their European adventure and they will find out their opponents when the group stage draw is made today.

Meanwhile, a fire shut down the lighting at AZ Alkmaar’s stadium, forcing the Dutch team’s play-off against Atromitos to be halted after an hour. AZ, who were trailing 1-0 after a 53rd-minute goal by Dimitris Papadopoulos, said the remaining half hour will be played this morning. AZ won the first leg in Greece 3-1. There were no reports of injuries among fans who were evacuated from the stadium because of the fire. Sevilla cruised into the group stage by completing a 9-1 aggregate hammering of Slask Wroclaw in their play-off tie.

The Spanish side won 5-0 in the second leg at Wroclaw’s Municipal Stadium with Carlos Bacca scoring twice. Ivan Rakitic, Jairo Samperio and Diego Perotti also got on the scoresheet.

Remarkably, Wroclaw could still join them in the next phase as all losing teams are to be placed into a random draw to replace the expelled Fenerbahce.

Dutch side Feyenoord were unable to turn around their tie against Motherwell-conquering Russians Kuban Krasnodar despite a bright start in Rotterdam, losing 2-1 to go out 3-1 on aggregate.

Fiorentina needed to rely on away goals to oust Grasshoppers after losing their second leg 1-0 in Florence. Nassim Ben Khalifa put the Swiss team in the ascendancy but the Italians’ first-leg efforts proved decisive after a 2-2 aggregate draw.

There were shock losses for VfB Stuttgart, who crashed 4-3 on aggregate to Croatian outfit HNK Rijeka, and Serie A side Udinese, whose 1-1 draw away to Slovan Liberec of Czech Republic after they were stunned 3-1 in the home leg.