Real beat Zenit 2 - 1
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Ruud van Nistelrooy scored the winning goal Tuesday to give Real Madrid a 2-1 victory over Zenit St. Petersburg in Group H of the Champions League.
Van Nistelrooy scored with a left-foot shot in the 31st minute, ending Madrid's poor away record in the competition. The nine-time champions had not won in seven matches on the road since beating Steaua Bucharest 4-1 in Romania in October 2006.
"We scored a very important and very tough victory," Real Madrid coach Bernd Schuster said.
Madrid took the lead in the fourth minute when Tomas Hubocan scored an own-goal, trying to clear Rafael van der Vaart's cross from the right.
Zenit needed time to recover and started to threaten Madrid's defense down the left flank after 20 minutes.
In the 25th, Radek Sirl put Andrei Arshavin down the left and Danny leaped in front of the goal to meet the cross and beat Madrid goalkeeper Iker Casillas with the outer side of the right foot.
Six minutes later, Nistelrooy capitalized on Hubocan's sloppy play in the box.
"Our opponent's class showed through," Arshavin said. "They capitalized on their chances, while we had many and did not score."
Zenit dominated the game in the second half and came close many times.
"St. Petersburg deserved a draw," Schuster said. "But for some reason in the first half, they didn't play the way we expected them to. Only after substitutions in the second half did they raise the tempo."
In the 73rd, Zenit coach Dick Advocaat put in two fresh strikers — Alejandro Dominguez and Fatih Tekke. Three minutes later, Tekke forced Castillas to make a stunning save.
Danny missed the host team's last chance by shooting over the crossbar in injury time.
"I really disappointed with the result," Zenit coach Dick Advocaat said.
Dick Advoccat blamed his players for poor capitalizing.
"We created an unimaginable number of chances, but couldn't score," Advocaat said. "I can't step on the pitch to do it instead of the players."
Madrid was without its core midfield of Wesley Sneijder, Jose Maria "Guti" Gutierrez and Fernando Gago. They had skipped the trip to St. Petersburg to recover from leg injuries.
Schuster said he had planed to put Raul into action on Tuesday, but decided to let him rest after a tough match in the Spanish league.
"It's so important that we have so many strong players in our team that we have possibility of rotating them," the German coach said.
Madrid has six points from two games in Group H, while Zenit remained winless with zero points.
Zenit next hosts BATE Borisov on Oct. 21, and Madrid visits Juventus.
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