Porto's "Silva" Goal Sinks Celtic

The newly-crowned Portuguese champions FC Porto vindicated the bookies in Wednesday's UEFA Cup final in Seville, but only after an epic two-hour battle with a never-say-die Celtic side. It was a match short on flowing football, but which more than made up for it in passion and drama.

The Portuguese, odds-on favorites going into the match, went ahead twice in normal time, only to see their lead cancelled out within minutes by the resilient Scots. Then they did it again with five minutes of extra time left on the clock, and this time, the Celts could find no answer.

Derlei Double

Fittingly, it was Derlei Silva who gave Celtic the kiss of death, with his second goal of the match and his twelfth of the tournament. He picked up a loose ball with just five minutes of extra time remaining, and thumped the ball past Celtic keeper Robert Douglas.

One could be forgiven for thinking it would be a home game of sorts for Porto, given their home town's relative proximity to the venue. But tens of thousands of Celtic fans made the trip from Scotland, and they appeared to outnumber the Portuguese by about three-to-one in the capacity crowd of 52,972 in Seville's Estadio Olímpico. At times it sounded as if the game was being played in Glasgow.

Porto will have been more used to the heat and humidity in the Andalusian capital, but that advantage was cancelled out by the poor state of the pitch, which made their usual brand of passing football almost impossible, and suited Celtic's more robust style of play.

Cagey first half

The two sides spent most of a cagey first half sounding each other out, with Porto dominating possession but looking far from dangerous in front of goal. After 45 minutes, it was still goalless, and both sides looked happy to take that scoreline into the dressing rooms with them at half-time.

Then Derlei struck for the first time. Douglas managed to block a fierce shot from Dmitri Alenitchev, but the ball fell to Derlei and he made no mistake from point blank range.

Larsson the leveller

The Scots came out undaunted after the interval, and seized control of proceedings. Two minutes into the second half, Didier Agathe showed his pace on the right wing and whipped in a cross to Henrik Larsson, who headed home his 10th goal of the tournament, and his 200th for Celtic.

Celtic seemed almost surprised by its quick recovery, and that surprise turned to shock seven minutes later when Alenitchev latched onto a delightful through ball from Deco to restore the lead.

The Scots were spurred into action again, and pressed forward in numbers. Three minutes later they were rewarded when Larsson headed home his second of the night off an Alan Thompson corner.

The game continued at a furious pace, punctuated by some wild tackling that saw Celtic's Dianbobo Balde and Porto's Nuno Valente booked. Neither would be around for the end of the match, although both were still on the pitch when the regulation 90 minutes were up.

Derlei's "Silva" Goal

Extra time brought with it the premiere of UEFA's new "Silver Goal" ruling, which is being tried out instead of the "Golden Goal" rule, whereby the first goal scored in extra time automatically ends the game. Under the "Silver Goal" ruling, if a team is leading after one half of extra time, the match is deemed over, otherwise extra time is played to its conclusion. The idea is to give a team at least a chance to come back after conceding an extra time goal.

Balde was already in the dressing room when the first silver goal in history was scored. Five minutes into extra time, he earned his second yellow card with a lunging challenge on his tormentor Derlei. It proved to be one of the turning points of the match.

Both sides began to look tired, and 10-man Celtic began to concentrate on defending. With the last 15 minutes underway, neither team looked particularly dangerous until Derlei popped up in the box again and dealt Celtic the killer blow.

The Portuguese pulled out all the stops to prevent Celtic from equalizing, with keeper Vitor Baia faking injury for at least a minute in the night's most theatrical performance. With extra time officially over and four minutes of stoppage time still to go, Nuno Valente was dismissed for his second bookable offense.

The playing field was level again, at least in a figurative sense, but though Celtic dug deep, they couldn't find the goal that would level the scores and take the match to penalties. Inexperienced substitute Shaun Maloney blasted a late free kick over the bar when he might have been better off floating it into the square, and the UEFA Cup was on its way to Portugal for the first time in history.