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Gilk spares Monaco's blushes

Cape Town - With virtually the last touch of the match Kamil Glik grabbed an undeserved 1-1 draw for Monaco against Bayer Leverkusen at Stade Louis II in the Champions League.

The opening 45 minutes passed almost without incident as Leverkusen were understandably tentative away from home against one of the tougher teams in their group, but Monaco's reluctance to go forward was almost inexplicable.

The visitors produced the only note-worthy moment of the half on the stroke of half time when Chicharito seemed to create a bit of space from nothing to lash a shot toward Danijel Subasic, who pulled off a fantastic save to deny the Mexican.

The hosts showed some promise after the break with Bernardo Silva timing his run into the box perfectly to receive a wonderful throughball from Thomas Lemar but got across to make a desperate block to deny him.

Leverkusen then began to take advantage of their hosts' tentativeness with Kevin Volland, Charles Aranguiz and Hakan Calhanoglu all testing Subasic, who stood firm in the Monaco goal.

However, the Bundesliga outfit found their breakthrough in the 73rd minute when Admir Mehmedi delivered an inch-perfect cross for Chicharito, who nodded home a simple header from close range to put them ahead.

The action died down once again as Leverkusen retreated to defend their advantage. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the wrong move as Gilk got hold of the ball deep into stoppage time and hit an absolute thunderbolt to beat Bernd Leno and snatch a draw for Monaco with their only shot on target in the entire game.

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