Zenit St Petersburg 0 - 1 Bayer Leverkusen

Zenit St Petersburg 0-1 Bayer Leverkusen

Updated: April 10, 2008, 7:54 PM UK

Zenit St Petersburg progressed to the UEFA Cup semi-finals 4-2 on aggregate despite a 1-0 defeat to Bayer Leverkusen in the second leg of their last-eight tie in Russia.

Dmitri Bulykin made the most of a rare start to score the only goal of the game but it was nowhere near enough to overturn Zenit's 4-1 advantage from the first leg.

Leverkusen knew they had a mountain to climb after last week's demolition and began the game brightly.

Bulykin broke through the Zenit defence after just four minutes but Viacheslav Malafeev saved well at his feet.

The German side used that early sign of intent to build the pressure on their hosts, and they came close to creating an opening again after 12 minutes when Paul Freier sent in a dangerous cross from the right which forced Malafeev off his line to take the ball off the head of Bulykin.

The chance proved to be a sign of things to come as six minutes later Bulykin opened the scoring in a near identical move.

Gonzalo Castro received the ball in space on the right and delivered a cross to the far post where the Russian forward rose above the Zenit defence to head past Malafeev.

But Leverkusen failed to build on the early goal and the remainder of the half faded into a scrappy affair.

It picked up again in the second period but this time it was Zenit who took control of the game.

Andrei Arshavin fired just wide from the edge of the area six minutes after the break, then Rene Adler had to be alert to keep out a string of inswinging corners from the young Russian forward that all looked goalbound.

Zenit's superior passing kept Leverkusen off the ball, and they failed to threaten until the 66th minute when Lukas Sinkiewicz burst into the Zenit area and fired into the side netting.

Then with 20 minutes remaining Zenit almost killed the tie for good when a clever pass over the Leverkusen defence freed Igor Denisov whose shot bounced back off the post.

Anatoliy Tymoschuk had a chance to level from the spot with six minutes left after Pavel Pogrebnyak was fouled in the penalty area by Karim Haggui, but despite a long run up the Zenit forward's shot was not strong enough to beat Adler.