<\/p>\n
Diego Costa’s away goal earned Atletico Madrid a 1-0 win over AC Milan in the first leg of their UEFA Champions League last-16 encounter.<\/p>\n
The hosts created the better of the early chances at the San Siro, but were unable to find a way past an inspired Thibaut Courtois.<\/p>\n
The Belgian goalkeeper, on loan at Atletico from Chelsea, produced two stunning first half stops – tipping a stinging drive from Kaka onto the crossbar before going on to push an Andrea Poli header onto the base of the post.<\/p>\n
Kaka also grazed the top of the net after combining with Mario Balotelli, while the latter fizzed a curling effort inches past the post as Milan knocked on the door without being able to swing it open.<\/p>\n
That remained the case in the second period, with Kaka drilling across the face of goal and Michael Essien planting a free header wide of the upright.<\/p>\n
Milan were left to rue their inability to turn pressure into goals seven minutes from time when an Atletico corner was touched on at the near post and Costa back-pedalled to nod powerfully past Christian Abbiati.<\/p>\n
For much of the contest it seemed Clarence Seedorf’s unrivalled Champions League pedigree might well guide Milan to a valuable win, but the Dutchman – four times a winner of this competition as a player – will have come away hugely frustrated after seeing his charges slip to a damaging defeat.<\/p>\n
Diego Costa’s away goal earned Atletico Madrid a 1-0 win over AC Milan in the first leg of their UEFA Champions League last-16 encounter. The hosts created the better of the early chances at the San Siro, but were unable to find a way past an inspired Thibaut Courtois. The Belgian goalkeeper, on loan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60,82],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2024"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2026,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2024\/revisions\/2026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}