Lucho bemoans Porto's missed opportunity

Skipper Lucho González acknowledged FC Porto's fate is no longer in their own hands after the 2004 UEFA Champions League winners failed to hold onto the advantage the midfielder had given them at FC Zenit on Wednesday.

Although Lucho's header from Danilo's cross had Porto on course to avenge their matchday three defeat at home to the Russian Premier League leaders, their former striker Hulk – who later had a penalty saved by Helton – quickly restored parity to keep his new club a point ahead of his old in Group G. While Steven Defour said the Portuguese visitors had "controlled the whole game and created some dangerous opportunities", Zenit might have snatched all three points as the second-half introduction of Andrey Arshavin gave their attack extra impetus.

Lucho González, Porto midfielder
No [we are not satisfied], particularly because of how the match went and also because we wanted to get three points. Unfortunately we didn't manage it. There are still two games left and we have to hope we collect all six points and Zenit drop some.

It was great play from Danilo, a great cross. The ball went precisely to my head and I managed to convert it. It was a great performance from us. Zenit are a great team with great players, though. We knew we would have difficulties against them, yet we could have collected three points. Overall we left a good impression here. We should have taken our chances but we scored one and then struggled.

Steven Defour, Porto midfielder
When you see the game, we dropped two points. We controlled the whole match and scored a goal. Then there was a mistake between our defenders and our goalkeeper and they equalised and it became more difficult. But we still controlled the game and created some dangerous opportunities, though we couldn't find the second goal.

We knew we needed a good result here and 1-1 is not really a very good result. It is still not finished but it doesn't make things any easier for us. All is not lost, although we wanted the win. We did almost everything in order to get it. We played a good game, but unfortunately couldn't get over the line.

Nicolas Lombaerts, Zenit defender
The first half wasn't that good, so from that point of view you could say it was a point won. The second half was really good: we missed a penalty and had another couple of chances, so in that respect it was two points dropped. I'm disappointed because the second half was so much better and I don't know why we didn't play like that in the first.

Andrey [Arshavin] came on and did really well. He was running in between the lines and dropping deep, so he made space for other players. He created a couple of chances. We created a lot, in fact, but missed the penalty. We had a little bit of bad luck, but you couldn't say we weren't trying enough.

Andrey Arshavin, Zenit forward
It was easier for me than for my team-mates. For the first 60 minutes, I sat on the bench and watched the game and [when I came on] there were areas in the Porto defence that we started to exploit.

It's difficult for me to say why we played so badly in the first half, but I can certainly say we were very poor at bringing the ball out of defence. I don't think Porto's pressing game was all that impressive – they just didn't give us much space, yet that was enough to make it difficult to get the ball forward to our attackers. Nothing went our way in the first half and the only reason we scored was due to a defensive mix-up and the alertness of Hulk, so that was a slice of luck.

Of course we are disappointed because if you look at the game as a whole, even if it wasn't deserved, we had more opportunities to win. Then again, Porto are also a good side.