RBK won their greatest victory thus far in the Europan cups, and went on to the third qualifying round for the Champions League.

Tampere will be the next opponent, and therefore participation in the group stages in the Champions League for the elleventh time is within reach, even though the Finnish league champions played well against Levski Sofia.

With a 3-1 lead from the first match in Kazakhstan, Rosenborg had an advantage before the game began. Yssouf Kone secured advancement in the first minute of the game by dribbling his way through the defense and passing the ball to compatriot Abdou Traore. That was the beginning of a great match by the two Ivorians, who made Astana's defense look like amateurs.

"We got an early goal and therefore got onto the right track. They had to move their team up to get a goal, thereby giving us plenty of room to attack, something we took advantage of," Knut T�rum said.

Kone has shown that he is worth giving playtime the last week, and was involved in all of RBK's four first goals: 2-0 came after he passed the ball on to Steffen Iversen, who cooly sent the ball in an arch above the keeper. Kone then used his acceleration to pass the defense and send a crossbal to Traore, who then scored the 3-0 goal.

Alexandr Suchkov scored after a slip of the hand by Lars Hirschfeld, before Kone showed up once more: the RBK striker avoided Astana's offside trap, and was in no way hindered by the goalie who thought the ref was going to blow his whistle.

Rosenborg weren't content, and kept on attacking relentlessly after half time. Abdou Traore, who began his first match since the one against Namsos in May, secured a hattrick by scoring two goals in three minutes: The first came on a volley after a dazzling crossball from Marek Sapara, the next one after an Astana defender was unable to get rid of the ball properly and sent it right into the 18 year old's lap.

An hour into the game Sapara finished it all by sending a free kick from 25 meters into the goal. After that the game died off. A 7-1 victory (10-2 put together) are results which will be noticed all over Europe!

"Today we met a team that gave up early. In the next round we will start at zero again and underestemating Tampere would be insane when you are so close to getting into the Champions Leauge as we are now," was the only thing Knut T�rum would say about the last hindrance on Rosenborg's way to the greatest club tournament of them all.

Match statistics

ROSENBORG	7-1	Astana
Yssouf Kone 1, 33 Steffen Iversen 7 Abdou Traore 17, 50, 53 Marek Sapara 62		Alexandr Suchkov 22

Wednesday 8. August 2007 20:45
Champions League 2. qualifying round, Lerkendal stadion
12 827 attendants

Rosenborg [4-3-3]
Lars Hirschfeld - Roar Strand (Fredrik Stoor 46), Christer Basma, Miika Koppinen, Mikael Dorsin - Marek Sapara (Michael Jamtfall 64), Vidar Riseth (Per Ciljan Skjelbred 46), Alexander Tettey - Steffen Iversen, Yssouf Kone, Abdou Traore

Yellow cards RBK: none