Italian pre-eminence shattered by Manchester United in the Champions League

AS Roma also departed the scene after losing 1-0 at Leeds United who advance by the same score courtesy of a second half thunderbolt from Aussie hotshot Harry Kewell.

It doesn’t get much worse than this for the big-spending Italians, who lost to Udinese on Tuesday following an away goals defeat by Czech league leaders Slavia Prague and who may now reflect that the hegemony of Serie A is in mortal danger, if not dead and buried.

Vigo, struggling to keep pace with the top five in Spain after a good start, caught Juve cold with a goal inside 30 seconds from Frenchman Claude Makelele.

Juve’s night would get far worse and by half time, they were two goals and two men down. Without inspirational leader Zinedine Zidane, not fully fit and left on the bench until late on, Juve, with just one league defeat all season, were rudderless.

On 26 minutes, Antonio Conte received a second yellow card for a crude tackle and five minutes later Alessandro Birindelli, facing his own ‘keeper two metres out, bundled the ball into his own net following a corner.

Seconds before the interval, juve, three Times uefa cupwinners, had paulo montero ordered off for appearing to strike out at valery karpin.

In the second half, juve’s dutch keeper edwin van der sarmade two howlers to gift two close range goals to South african benny mccarthy and hand juventus their second worst loss in their illustrious european history.

The club’s worst defeat ever came in 1958 when theitalians lost 7-0 to Austrian club vienna sk in only their second ever european game.

"I’M Disappointed. Eleven men against eleven we could havedone it and maybe even ten against eleven," said crestfallen juve coach carlo ancelotti.

Vigo next face lens of France, who prevented anall-spanish match up by knocking out atletico madrid 4-2 on the night, 6-4 on aggregate, aided by two headers from pascal nouma.

Leeds killed off roma when kewell struck a thunderous 20-yard shot which keeper francesco antonioli could only palm into the roof of the net to take David 0’leary’s men through to the last eight and set up a two leg encounter against slavia prague.

O’leary could not hide his delight afterwards.

"Nobody thought we’D Come this far in the competition butwe got about them from the very start," he enthused.

"We then got our goal then we closed them down. We workedhard and rode our luck over the two games but overall I thought we deserved to win through.

Roma began to show their frustration with two of theirplayers sent off in the final minute.