Carlos Tevez scored on a diving header in the 70th minute, and Manchester United beat AS Roma 1-0 Wednesday night to reach the European Champions League semifinals.
Manchester United won the home-and-home series on 3-0 aggregate and will play Barcelona, which defeated visiting Schalke 1-0 on a 43rd-minute goal by Yaya Toure and advanced on 2-0 aggregate.
“If we’ve got a full squad we’ve got a chance—somebody has got to lose. We’re looking forward to it,” Man United manager Alex Ferguson said. “You have opportunities in life when you’ve got something special, and we have something special and we want to go there and show that.
“We have to go there and be positive.”
Liverpool plays Chelsea in the other semifinal. The three English clubs also were in the final four last year along with AC Milan, which won the title.
AS Roma had a chance to go ahead in the 30th minute, but Daniele de Rossi missed a penalty kick after Wes Brown was called for a foul in the penalty area on Roberto Mancini.
“If De Rossi had scored that penalty, it would have been an entirely different match,” Roma coach Luciano Spalletti said.
Tevez got his goal off a cross from Owen Hargreaves. With a two-goal lead coming in, Ferguson gambled by not starting his top scorers, Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney, a move that looked ahead to Sunday’s English Premier League game against Arsenal.
At Barcelona, Toure scored after Bojan Krkic’s 43rd-minute cross was deflected up and headed around. Krkic scored at Schalke last week.
“I know for a fact that we need to play better if we want to challenge Man United, because at the moment they’re on a high and seems like it’s going to be difficult to beat them,” striker Thierry Henry said. “But Middlesbrough showed that they can score goals against them (in a 2-2 Premier League tie last weekend). So anything can happen.
“But somehow, we’re in the semifinals of the Champions League and a lot of teams would like to be in that position.”