UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE : Chelsea join Liverpool in knockout phase

Two English clubs, Liverpool and Chelsea, sealed their places in the knock out phase of the UEFA Champions League on Tuesday night following their victories over Salzbrug and Lille respectively.

In Austria, Jurgen Klopp’s men laboured before they could get past their stubborn opponents.

After failing to get any headway within an hour into the game, Naby Keita and Mohamed Salah both scored in the space of 100 seconds to give Liverpool a somewhat lucky victory.

After intially mounting strong resistant, the quickfire goals knocked the wind out of Salzburg as Liverpool eased through the final 30 minutes and into Monday’s last-16 draw – which takes place in Nyon as group winners, despite Napoli’s 4-0 win over Genk.

At Stamford Bridge, Nigeria’s Victor Osimhen watched on from the bench as Chelsea piped his French team Lille 2-1.

Knowing that they needed victory, Chelsea started well and took the lead through Tammy Abraham who tapped in from Willian’s cutback inside of 20 minutes. A second arrived before half-time, as Azpilicueta scored from a corner.

Chelsea pushed for a third in the second-half, but it was Lille instead who found the back of the net as Loïc Rémy reduced the deficit.

In other centres Antonio Conte’s Inter Milan were knocked out of Champions League following their 2-1 home defeat at San Siro against a second string Barcelona team.