Zenit St. Petersburg were much improved in the away leg of their tie with Borussia Dortmund, but despite a 2-1 win on Wednesday, they still crashed out.
Zenit St. Petersburg picked up an impressive 2-1 win away to Borussia Dortmund in the second leg of their Champions League round of 16 tie, but it wasn’t enough to overturn the 4-2 defeat they suffered in the home fixture.
Hulk opened the scoring after a quarter of an hour, before Sebastian Kehl pegged the Russians back on the stroke of halftime.
Salomon Rondón offered a lifeline by putting Zenit back ahead in the final 20 minutes, but it was too little, too late, and last year’s finalists progress into this season’s quarterfinals.
Even so, the new Zenit St. Petersburg Coach, André Villas-Boas, who doesn’t take charge officially until Thursday (today) will be rather pleased with what he’s got to work with.
Save for ceding a good early chance to Pierre Emerick-Aubameyang, Zenit looked confident in the first half.
They managed to keep the ball well in midfield, and, thanks to the industry of their mobile midfield pivot, make Dortmund look rather pedestrian going forward.
It would prove to be a costly miss, as a minute later Dortmund killed the tie with an equalising goal.
Marcel Schmelzer overlapped down the left, delivering a cross for Kehl to get on the end of and head into the back of the net.
The goal seemed to have irreparably dented Zenit’s hopes of a miraculous comeback, with Dortmund laying siege to Vyacheslav Malafeev’s penalty area throughout the second half.
However, the visitors had other ideas, with substitute striker, Rondón, providing a glimmer of hope by nodding Domenico Criscito’s cross beyond Weidenfeller.
Unfortunately there were less than 20 minutes remaining, and the Russians still needed two goals to avoid crashing out.
Despite their best efforts, it was too big a task.
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