Club Brugge kept alive their Champions League play-offs hopes with a comfortable win at Kairat Almaty.<\/p>\n
First-half goals from Aleksandar Stankovic and Hans Vanaken put the Belgian side in control and Kairat never threatened to get back into the game.<\/p>\n
Romeo Vermant extended the lead after the break and Brandon Mechele headed in the fourth late on.<\/p>\n
Kairat’s Adilet Sadybekov gave the home fans something to shout about with a superb volley in added time but it was no more than a consolation as the away side stay in contention for a top 24 finish.<\/p>\n
A second win of the league phase puts Club Brugge on seven points while Kairat stay bottom of the table with just one point from seven matches.<\/p>\n
While the Kazakh fans made their presence felt early on, Brugge’s superiority soon began to tell and lively left-winger Mamadou Diakhon came close to open the scoring with a low, curling effort that came back off the post.<\/p>\n
The breakthrough came after 32 minutes when Kairat goalkeeper Temirlan Anarbekov could only punch a cross to the edge of the box, where Stankovic was waiting to thump the ball into the unguarded net.<\/p>\n
Ivan Leko’s side doubled their lead six minutes later as a back-post cross was nodded into the six-yard box by Joaquin Seys for captain Vanaken to shin the ball home from close range.<\/p>\n
Carlos Forbs had the chance to make it three in the second half but was denied by Anarbekov with just the keeper to beat.<\/p>\n
The result was put beyond doubt in the 74th minute as Diakhon went past his full-back again and squared for Vermant to finish from a couple of yards out.<\/p>\n
With Kairat tiring, centre-back Mechele stole in to head home Vanaken’s cross five minutes from time before Sadybekov’s fine effort from 20 yards out reduced the deficit in the 92nd minute.<\/p>\n
Brugge now face Marseille in a crucial final group match on 28 January, while Kairat, now officially eliminated, finish their European campaign away at Arsenal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Club Brugge kept alive their Champions League play-offs hopes with a comfortable win at Kairat Almaty. First-half goals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-422456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}