By DPA
Moscow : England manager Steve McClaren insisted a penalty decision was to blame as his side suffered a 2-1 defeat away to Russia in the qualifiers for the Euro 2008 football tournament.
The result Wednesday leaves Russia favourites to qualify ahead of England for the tournament in Austria and Switzerland next summer.
England would have guaranteed qualification for themselves with a victory in Moscow, and seemed on the way as Wayne Rooney gave them the lead with a 29th-minute volley.
But the Manchester United striker then conceded a penalty with a clumsy challenge on Konstantin Zyryanov, allowing Roman Pavlyuchenko to fire in a 69th-minute equaliser.
Replays showed, though, that the foul had occurred just outside the box.
“It was a game we were in control of,” McClaren said. “We’d weathered the early storm and never looked in any danger.
“I think everyone will agree that decisions turn games, and the penalty was outside the box but that was not seen by either the linesman or the referee.
“That decision has cost us. I can’t fault the players or their attitude or endeavour, but because of that decision we went from a winning position to losing the game.”
Four minutes after the equaliser, Pavlyuchenko was on hand again to stab in the loose ball after Paul Robinson had parried a shot from Alexey Berezutsky.
Russia trail England by two points, but they have a game in hand, and would expect to pull a point ahead by beating Andorra in their next qualifier.
That would leave England having to get a better result at home to Croatia than Russia achieves away to Israel in the final set of fixtures next month if they are to reach the finals.
“The group is over 12 games, not 10 or 11,” McClaren said. “90 minutes ago it was in our hands and now it is not.”
Russia manager Guus Hiddink was understandably delighted by his side’s resilience.
“We can be very proud of what the players achieved,” he said. “We had a blow in the first half, when the one chance we gave away was directly a goal – but that’s the quality of their strikers.
“For the rest we were dominating without being deadly in and around the box. At half-time we made a change and also we said to them that the moment we got the equaliser we had to press the defence.
“If we put them under pressure, we thought they would not cope with that.
“The team did very well. It’s a joy to see creativity in the team, and I like this creativity translated into efficiency.”