AZ Alkmaar chose to rest star striker Troy Parrott as they failed to overturn a 3-0 first-leg deficit in their home UEFA Conference League tie with Shakhtar Donetsk.<\/p>\n
The Republic Of Ireland striker has scored 15 league goals in 25 appearances this season, making him the Eredivisie’s joint-second top scorer. Feyenoord’s Ayase Ueda leads all strikers with 23 goals to his name.<\/p>\n
Alkmaar side drew 2-2 on the night, losing 5-2 over the two legs. With the second leg goalless at half-time, any faint hopes of a rousing comeback were put to bed when Alisson Santana put the away side 1-0 ahead on the night just before the hour mark.<\/p>\n
Danish winger Isak Jensen equalised on the night for the hosts in the 73rd minute before Matej Sin put them 2-1 ahead with 10 mintues remaining.<\/p>\n
The Ukranian visitors levelled the game three minutes later through Luca Meirelles.<\/p>\n
Alkmaar currently sit sixth in the Dutch top flight with four league games to play. They are three points off fifth-placed Ajax while runaway leaders PSV Eindhoven are already confirmed as champions.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere in Conference League action, Crystal Palace completed a great evening for Premier League clubs by holding on to beat Fiorentina 4-2 on aggregate despite a 2-1 defeat in Italy.<\/p>\n
AEK Athens almost pulled off a dramatic second-leg comeback, winning 3-1 at home to Rayo Vallecano but succumbing 4-3 overall on aggregate.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the mozt eye-catching result of the night saw Strasbourg overturn a 2-0 first-leg defeat by beating Mainz 4-0 on the night to progess to the semi-finals.<\/p>\n
Watch Republic Ireland v Poland in FIFA Women’s World Cup qualifying on Saturday from 2.30pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow our live blog on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app. Listen to Saturday Sport on RT\u00c9 Radio 1<\/p>\n
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Listen to the RT\u00c9 Soccer podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AZ Alkmaar chose to rest star striker Troy Parrott as they failed to overturn a 3-0 first-leg deficit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-402325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}