Atletico Madrid's Radamel Falcao fights to head the ball with Rubin Kazan's Cristian Ansaldi (L) during their Europa League match at Vicente Calderon Stadium in Madrid Thursday. — Reuters LONDON — Russian clubs ruled the Europa League roost Thursday as Rubin Kazan upset holder Atletico Madrid while Anzhi Makhachkala and Zenit St Petersburg opened up commanding first-leg advantages in their last 32 ties. Rubin's Gokdeniz Karadeniz scored after six minutes and Pablo Orbaiz struck deep into added time to give the Russians, who played the entire second half with 10 men after Roman Sharonov was sent off, a shock 2-0 win at Atletico. Anzhi beat Hanover 3-1 and Zenit won 2-0 at home against five-time European Cup winner Liverpool while goals from Vladimir Darida, Frantisek Rajtoral and Stanislav Tecl helped unfancied Czechs Viktoria Plzen upset Napoli 3-0 away. Brazilian Oscar spared European champions Chelsea's blushes late on at Sparta Prague in a 1-0 victory and Gareth Bale continued his remarkable scoring form with two superb free kicks in Tottenham Hotspur's 2-1 home win over Olympique Lyon. Host Inter Milan, three time European champions, beat Champions League dropouts CFR Cluj 2-0 with two goals from substitute Rodrigo Palacio. The win was soured by injury-prone forward Diego Milito lasting six minutes and crying as he left the pitch with a knee problem but fellow Argentine Palacio took his place with aplomb. Atletico grew increasingly frustrated in the second half against Kazan and leading scorer Radamel Falcao hit the woodwork as the clock ticked on. Allowing goalkeeper Sergio Asenjo forward for a last-minute corner could prove fatal for next Thursday's second leg as Spaniard Orbaiz gleefully slotted into the unguarded net with the home side's shotstopper at the wrong end of the pitch. Borussia Moenchengladbach and Lazio drew 3-3 in the game of the night, the Germans coming from 2-1 down to lead only for the Italians to level in the dying seconds. There were impressive wins for Spanish club Levante, who beat runaway Greek league leaders Olympiakos Piraeus 3-0 at home and Ajax Amsterdam, 2-0 victors against former European champions Steaua Bucharest in the Netherlands. Champions League dropouts Benfica won 1-0 at German club Bayer Leverkusen, Oscar Cardozo on target for the Portuguese just after the hour while Dynamo Kiev and Girondins Bordeaux shared the honours in a 1-1 draw in Ukraine. Belarussians BATE Borisov drew 0-0 at home with Fenerbahce. In the later matches there was a 2-0 win for Basel over Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk while VfB Stuttgart and Newcastle United drew against Racing Genk and Ukraine's Metalist Kharkiv respectively. — Reuters
