Steven Gerrard scored two goals in two minutes on Tuesday to help put Liverpool into the second qualifying round of the Champions League after beating Total Network Solutions 3-0 and 6-0 on aggregate.
Djibril Cisse scored the opening goal for the defending champions in the 26th minute and Liverpool captain Gerrard, who scored all three goals in the first leg last week, added insurance goals in the 85th and 86th minutes.
Dietmar Hamann could have added another for Liverpool, but he missed a penalty.
Liverpool did not originally qualify for this year’s tournament because they failed to finish among the top four in the English Premier League. After Liverpool won the Champions League final, Uefa said the club could defend the title but would have to start play in the first qualifying rounds, meaning they must play six matches just to reach the 32-team field for the opening round in September.
The English team will next face Lithuania’s Kaunas, who beat HB Torshavn of the Faeroe Islands 4-0 to advance with an 8-2 aggregate win. The first leg is scheduled for next week in Lithuania.
In the only other match of the day, Dinamo Tbilisi of Georgia advanced 2-1 on aggregate by beating Levadia Tallinn of Estonia 2-0.
The other nine second-leg matches are scheduled for Wednesday.
Welsh champions TNS weren’t able to host the match at their own stadium, Treflan, because it was too small to satisfy Uefa regulations. The game was at Wrexham, whose Racecourse Stadium has a capacity of 10 000.
Earlier on Tuesday, Liverpool agreed to pay Southampton £7-million for striker Peter Crouch.
The 24-year-old Crouch will have a medical examination on Wednesday and is likely to sign a four-year contract the same day, Southampton said on their website.
In Kaunas, Lithuania, Arturas Rimkevicius scored twice for Kaunas in the second half. Andrius Velicka opened the scoring with his third goal of the series, and Irmantas Zelmikas added the fourth.
In Tbilisi, Georgia, Dinamo played the last 25 minutes with 10 men, but goals from Levan Melkadze and Sergi Orbeladze on either side of half-time gave them the victory and a spot in the next round against Brondby of Denmark. — Sapa-AP