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Fringe Socceroo Nikita Rukavytsya is possibly 90 minutes away from sealing a spot in the Champions League group stage with Maccabi Haifa, as are Benfica.

A day after Socceroos captain Maty Ryan helped his new club FC Copenhagen to within one game of securing their place in the lucrative UEFA Champions League group stage, former teammate Nikita Rukavytsya has done the same in Israel.

Rukavytsya, who has played 20 times for the national team, but not since June 2021, was a 70th-minute substitute in Maccabi Haifa's 3-2 play-off first-leg home win against Crvena zvezda on Wednesday night.

The 35-year-old has finished top goalscorer in the Israeli Premier League twice in the last three seasons, and earlier this year became the leading foreign goalscorer.

He watched his side rally from 2-1 down, scoring twice after the break against the 1991 European Cup winners, before entering the match and helping them take a slender advantage to Serbia next week.

Elsewhere, Azerbaijan champions Qarabag were held to a 0-0 draw by Czech's Viktoria Plzen and Dynamo Kyiv's unlikely bid to qualify hit a hurdle, going down 2-0 at "home" to Benfica in Lodz.

Dynamo's fifth game in Champions League qualifying in the past month was played in Poland because they cannot host UEFA games in Ukraine during the Russian invasion that started in February.

Benfica began strongly and led in the ninth minute when Brazilian defender Gilberto overlapped in attack to score with a rising shot.

Under-21 international forward Goncalo Ramos doubled the lead in the 37th, and the Portuguese are favourites to complete the job in Lisbon on Tuesday.

Ramos, who scored a hat-trick in the third qualifying round against Denmark's FC Midtjylland, was replaced in the second half by former Dynamo forward Roman Yaremchuk.

Ukrainian team Shakhtar Donetsk have already qualified for the 32-team group stage.

With the AP.