Rooney has Red Devils in Champs League
Manchester United had double reason to celebrate on Wednesday — the team is back in the Champions League group stage and star striker Wayne Rooney is scoring again.
Rooney ended a drought of 10 games without a goal stretching back to April 4 with a hat trick in United’s 4-0 win at Bruges, helping the English club to a 7-1 victory on aggregate.
While the Champions League welcomed back one of the continent’s biggest names and a three-time European champion, a club with a very different pedigree also advanced.
Formed six years ago and in just its third season in European competition, FC Astana became the first team from Kazakhstan to qualify for the group stage after drawing 1-1 at APOEL Nicosia for a 2-1 aggregate win.
Nemanja Maksimovic’s goal in the 84th proved decisive for Astana, a team backed by Kazkahstan’s sovereign-wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna and the most remote of all the clubs in the group stage.
Others teams to qualify for last night’s group-stage draw were Bayer Leverkusen, CSKA Moscow and BATE Borisov of Belarus.
United missed out on the Champions League last season as a consequence of its dreadful season in 2013-14 under David Moyes, the successor to long-time manager Alex Ferguson.
Louis van Gaal has managed to restore England’s most successful club to Europe’s top competition at the first attempt.
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