Zenit St Petersburg 0
Bayer Leverkusen 1
Boulykin 18
Zenit 0 Bayer Leverkusen 1 (agg 4-2) April 10 2008
Zenit St Petersburg progressed to the UEFA Cup semi-finals despite a 1-0 defeat to Bayer Leverkusen in the second leg of their quarter-final tie on Thursday.
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 in Germany and began the game brightly.
Bulykin broke through the Russians' defence after just four minutes but Viacheslav Malafeev saved well at his feet.
The Bundesliga side 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 the visitors 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.
With 20 minutes remaining the hosts 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.