LONDON, 17 September 2003 — European champions AC Milan began the defense of their trophy with a battling 1-0 win over Ajax Amsterdam yesterday with the irrepressible Filippo Inzaghi on the scoresheet again.

Inzaghi pounced on a loose ball after 67 minutes to fire home his sixth goal in four matches as Milan went to the top of Champions League Group H following the 1-1 draw between Club Bruges and Celta Vigo in the same section.

But the night ended on a sour note for Milan who had Gennaro Gattuso sent off in stoppage time at the end of the match. Bruges ended their game with nine men after two sendings-off.

The opening night of action in this season’s competition proper saw Manchester United and Real Madrid race to high-scoring wins in their groups.

Manchester United beat Panathinaikos 5-0 at Old Trafford in Group E. Rangers beat VfB Stuttgart 2-1 at Ibrox in the other match in the group with two late goals. Real Madrid beat Olympique Marseille 4-2 at the Bernabeu Stadium where Ronaldo scored twice in their Group F match. The other game in the section between Partizan Belgrade and Porto ended in a 1-1 draw.

Big-spending Chelsea had to wait until five minutes from the end for their solitary strike and a 1-0 win at Sparta Prague. Defender William Gallas was the scorer in their Group G match, but Lazio secured an impressive 2-0 away win over Besiktas to take the early lead in the same group.

United cruised to a 5-0 destruction of Panathinaikos after hitting the Greek visitors with a four-goal first-half blitz. United, beaten by Real Madrid in the quarterfinals last season, were in command after French defender Mikael Silvestre bundled in a 13th-minute corner and South African midfielder Quinton Fortune lashed in a loose ball from the edge of the box a minute later.

Norway striker Ole Gunnar Solskjaer got the third after 33 minutes when his sidefooter slipped through the grasp of Greece keeper Antonis Nikopolidis and trickled over the line, and Nicky Butt headed the fourth from a John O’Shea cross on 40 minutes.

Panathinaikos, Greek runners-up last season, never threatened the English champions, who eased off in the second half with an eye on their premier league game against Arsenal on Sunday before capping the night with a first goal for the club by Eric Djemba-Djemba seven minutes from time.

Lazio battled to a 2-0 victory away to Besiktas in Group G in a game largely dominated by the Turkish Super League champions. Defender Jaap Stam opened the scoring for the Italian side in the 37th minute, rising unchallenged to head home a Stefano Fiore corner.

It was another header that brought Lazio’s second in the 77th minute. Fiore dived to nod the ball past a stranded Oscar Cordoba just seconds after Besiktas’s Sinan Kaloglu curled a shot just over the Lazio bar.

Mircea Lucescu’s side will rue a series of missed chances. Metin Tumer and Ibrahim Uzulmez turned the Lazio defense on several occasions but Turkish international striker Ilhan Mansiz and Romanian Daniel Pancu failed to convert.

Chelsea made a winning start to their Champions League campaign as William Gallas’s 85th minute goal gave the London side a 1-0 victory over Sparta Prague. Striker Hernan Crespo and midfielder Claude Makelele both made their full debuts for star-studded Chelsea, but it was French defender Gallas who broke the deadlock with a close-range finish from substitute Damien Duff’s cross.

New owner Roman Abramovich has spent more than 110 million pounds ($176.5 million) to rebuild Chelsea, but there was a lack of cohesion in the first half as Crespo struggled to forge an understanding with Adrian Mutu. But Chelsea, playing in the Champions League for the first time in three years, gradually took control after the break and they looked the more likely winners before Gallas popped up with his late strike.

Scottish champions Rangers staged an admirable second-half comeback by scoring twice within four minutes to beat VfB Stuttgart 2-1 at Ibrox. The German side took the in first-half injury time when striker Kevin Kuranyi bundled the ball home.

German midfielder Christian Nerlinger equalised after 74 minutes after some shoddy defending from Stuttgart, who have yet to concede a goal this season in five German league games. Danish winger Peter Lovenkrands, a halftime replacement for Paolo Vanoli, completed the turnaround when he hammered home from the outside the box with 12 minutes left. The victory means Rangers, who also hit the bar through Lovenkrands in the dying seconds, join English champions Manchester United as the early pacesetters.

Dickov Double Helps

Leicester Thrash Leeds

A spectacular volley from Lilian Nalis, a double from Paul Dickov and a header from Jamie Scowcroft gave Leicester City an easy 4-0 win over a poor Leeds United side in the Premier League on Monday.

Leicester’s first win of the season takes them up seven places to 11th, level on five points with five other clubs including Leeds, who slipped three places to 14th. “We were second best all over the pitch,” Leeds manager Peter Reid told Sky Sports. “We were really disappointing. They wanted it more than us. They had more energy and desire.”

Leicester made five changes with Marcus Bent and Craig Hignett given their first full outing, while Leeds also had two debutants in the shape of Brazilian World Cup winner Roque Junior and fellow defender Didier Domi.

The home side took the lead on 20 minutes when Nalis struck a dipping left-foot volley into the top right-hand corner of Paul Robinson’s net from 25 meters for his first goal since joining from Italian club Chievo Verona.