Fiorentina's Marcos Alonso celebrates after scoring against AS Roma in their Europa League round of 16 second leg soccer match at the Olympic stadium in Rome March 19, 2015.MAX ROSSI/Reuters
Fiorentina and Napoli guaranteed Italy at least two clubs in the Europa League quarterfinals by advancing on Thursday, while Everton was heavily beaten to leave England without any more teams in European competition.
Fiorentina scored three goals in the opening 22 minutes to set up a 3-0 away win over struggling Roma in the last-16 second leg, with the all-Italian matchup finishing 4-1 on aggregate.
Napoli defended stoutly to draw 0-0 with Dinamo Moscow and progress 3-1 on aggregate, reaching the quarterfinals of a European competition for the first time since 1989 — the year it won the UEFA Cup.
Two more Italian teams, Inter Milan and Torino, play in the late games and must overturn two-goal deficits from the first leg against Wolfsburg and Zenit St. Petersburg, respectively.
Everton was thrashed 5-2 at Dynamo Kyiv to fall out 6-4 on aggregate. With Arsenal and Manchester City knocked out of the Champions League this week, England has no representative in the last eight of either European competition for the first time since 1993.
Roma's season is falling apart, with the team having fallen 14 points behind Serie A leader Juventus in the Italian league and at risk of losing second place.
A late sending-off for Adem Ljajic for a second yellow card capped a dispiriting night which saw about a hundred of the club's 'ultras' leave the Stadio Olimpico after 30 minutes, by which time Roma had conceded three times in a 13-minute span.
Gonzalo Rodriguez converted a retaken penalty in the ninth minute, after a number of players encroached into the box for the first attempt. Marcos Alonso capitalized on a goalkeeping error to make it 2-0 in the 18th and Jose Maria Basanta headed in when unmarked in the 22nd.
Roma captain Francesco Totti, goalkeeper Morgan de Sanctis and midfielder Danielle de Rossi led the rest of the team's players over to talk to fans after match. Totti spoke for a long while with the head of the 'ultras.'
Kyiv's finishing was brilliant at its Olympic Stadium, although the hosts were helped by some dreadful defending by Everton.
Andriy Yarmolenko and Antunes scored long-distance strikes for Sergei Rebrov's team either side of goals by Lukasz Teodorczyk, Miguel Veloso and Oleh Gusev. Romeulu Lukaku provided Everton's only response.