Sporting Anderlecht drew 2-2 on the field of Partizan Belgrado as part of the first leg of the Champions League play-offs tonight, Wednesday 18th August 2010. Guillaume Gillet and Roland Juhasz scored the Purple & White goals.

Ariël Jacobs started with Czech players Jan Polak and Jan Lecjaks. RSCA immediately showed that they had come to Belgrado to score, after two minutes of play Suarez turned up in front of the home goalie alone, after a nice deviation by Lukaku, but a Partizan defender was able to avert his attempt. The following corner resulted in Boussoufa perfectly feeding the ball to Polak, but the Czech’s header went wide. The reaction of the Serbs came quickly, Iliev was dangerous three times within a few minutes. After that, Suarez turned up on the other side of the field again, but he was too late to turn Gillet’s perfect centre into a goal. Anderlecht’s best opportunity was one after 13 minutes of play, when Boussoufa’s corner was passed on to Juhasz by Gillet. The Hungarian’s attempt, however, went long. A few minutes later on, Suarez took his chance again, but Partizan’s goalie saved. The score at half-time, then, was 0-0.

The visitors opened the score after almost ten minutes of play in the second half. Guillaume Gillet managed to turn a perfect cross by Lecjaks - after a nice action by Boussoufa - into a goal and put a 0-1 lead on the scoreboard. Sporting seemed to have found their game at that point, but Partizan Belgrado reacted quickly. Cléo was the one who beat Proto. Ten minutes later on, the home team even took a lead when Jan Lecjaks tried to turn a shot into a corner, but accidently scored an owngoal: 2-1. Ariël Jacobs’ lads, however, did not give up and went looking for the equalizer, which was quickly put on the board by Roland Juhasz. The Hungarian put a brilliant deviation by Kanu into an empty goal: 2-2. At the end of the match, both Partizan and Anderlecht were close to scoring, but, in the end, the score remained 2-2.

The second leg of the final preliminary of the Champions League will take place at the Constant Vanden Stock Stadium on Tuesday 24th August 2010. Kickoff at 8.45 p.m.