By DPA
Hamburg : Spanish La Liga club Getafe snatched a last-gasp 1-1 equaliser at Bayern Munich Thursday to hold a slight advantage after their first leg UEFA Cup football quarter-final clash while Zenit St. Petersburg trounced Bayer Leverkusen 4-1 in Germany.
The other two quarter-finals Thursday ended in draws, with PSV Eindhoven managing a 1-1 draw in Fiorentina while Sporting Lisbon played a goalless draw at Glasgow Rangers.
In Munich, 63,000 fans thought their side would hold a one-goal advantage going into the second leg after Italian striker Luca Toni headed home midway through the first half, but a poor Martin Demichelis clearance in injury time came to Romanian Cosmin Contra and he lobbed the ball into the back of the net.
For Contra, the goal was sweet revenge after having earlier taken exception to Bayern president Franz Beckenbauer saying that he did not know anything about Getafe.
Contra had said at the time that it was unfortunate that Beckenbauer made such comments. “We have international players who are known in the world of football. But maybe Beckenbauer will know us when we beat Bayern and qualify to the semi-finals,” he had said.
Bayern coach Ottmar Hitzfeld rued his side’s missed chances.
“We should have been up by two goals at half time. Getafe played well and forced the equaliser. It is very difficult for the defence if the forwards fail to score,” he said.
In Florence, Fiorentina missed a number of chances in the first half, before Adrian Mutu finally broke the deadlock in the 53rd minute.
A long kick by goalkeeper Sebastian Frey was flicked on by Giampaolo Pazzini and the ball came to the Romanian striker, who tried to pushed the ball past Gomes. The goalkeeper managed to stop the shot, but the ball bounced against Mutu and into the goal.
In the 63rd minute, PSV managed to equalise through Danny Koevermans, who had been set up by Ibrahim Afellay.
In Scotland, Rangers, who ousted Bundesliga side Werder Bremen in the last round, had much more of the possession and created several chances, but failed to finish.
Lee McCulloch and Steven Davis both came close but could not find the goal that would have given the home side victory against a strong Sporting Lisbon team.
Russian club Zenit St Petersburg, meanwhile, should have all but qualified for the next round with a convincing 4-1 victory at Bayer Leverkusen.
Andrey Arshavin gave the visitors the lead in the 20th minute with a close-range effort, but Stefan Kiessling equalised on 33 minutes after a Zenit defender cleared the ball off the line but it came to the Germany striker.
The Russian side, who had already dominated proceedings in the first half, completely took over in the second half as they ran in a further three goals to put themselves in the driving seat ahead of the return leg.
Pavel Pogrebnyak, Aleksandr Anyukov and Igor Denisov with three goals in the space of 12 minutes killed any chance the home side had of coming back into the game to make the final score 4-1.
Leverkusen coach Michael Skibbe said he was very disappointed. “All the players did not reach their potential, you can’t blame any individual player. It will be very, very difficult to still reach the next round.”