{"id":171765,"date":"2012-03-29T12:18:48","date_gmt":"2012-03-29T08:18:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=171765"},"modified":"2012-03-29T12:20:06","modified_gmt":"2012-03-29T08:20:06","slug":"champions-league-real-madrid-and-chelsea-take-giant-strides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2012\/03\/29\/champions-league-real-madrid-and-chelsea-take-giant-strides.html","title":{"rendered":"Champions League: Real Madrid and Chelsea Take Giant Strides"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Real Madrid and Chelsea took giant strides towards the Champions League semifinals on Tuesday as they both recorded away wins in their quarterfinal first leg matches, AFP reports.<\/p>\n<p>A double from French striker Karim Benzema inspired nine-time winner Real to a 3-0 victory over Cypriot surprise package APOEL Nicosia and all but ensured a last four spot against the winner of Marseille and Bayern Munich.<\/p>\n<p>A second-half goal from Salomon Kalou gave Chelsea a 1-0 win over Portuguese outfit Benfica \u2014 ironically the only side playing on Tuesday that didn&#8217;t field a Portuguese player in its starting line-up \u2014 to inflict the first home defeat for the host in Europe this term.<\/p>\n<p>It puts the English side in a strong position for next week&#8217;s second leg and a semifinal against either holder Barcelona or AC Milan.<\/p>\n<p>APOEL had worked wonders to reach this stage \u2014 unprecedented for a Cypriot club \u2014 but its limitations were painfully exposed by a Real side bursting with superstars the host lacked.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The results:<\/strong> Benfica 0 lost to Chelsea 1 (Kalou 75); APOEL 0 lost to Real Madrid 3 (Benzema 74, 90, Kaka 82).<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Real Madrid and Chelsea took giant strides towards the Champions League semifinals on Tuesday as they both recorded away wins in their quarterfinal first leg matches.<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":171707,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[39468,39470,10940,10546,14014],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171765"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}