Zabaleta looks on bright side of defeat

If there is such a thing as glory in defeat in European competition then Pablo Zabaleta hasn't just bought the T-shirt he has left it utterly threadbare. The 24-year-old Argentinian international experienced, as an RCD Espanyol player, an agonising penalty shoot-out defeat by Sevilla FC in the UEFA Cup final two seasons ago.

Falling short
Last night his latest attempt at conquering continental club football's second-highest peak, now with Manchester City FC, ended in an honourable 4-3 aggregate loss to Hamburger SV in the quarter-finals. With Zabaleta a driving force from midfield, City prodded away at the Bundesliga team's rearguard all evening – without ultimately putting them to the sword. Mark Hughes's Premier League outfit could only prevail by 2-1, having lost 3-1 in Germany the week before.

'Great effort'
Zabaleta, nominally a right-back but showing great versatility in his first English season since leaving Espanyol, nonetheless found positives in the home performance. "We were excellent really," he told uefa.com. "We played really well. We created a lot of goalscoring situations. We were just missing that one extra goal, but overall we are happy because we produced a great effort."

Work to do
If City are to advance further down the road towards success, European qualification for future campaigns is a must. Zabaleta insisted that the side, currently eleventh in the Premier League, would push in their remaining six games to finish seventh in the hope that it could earn a UEFA Cup place. "It is always a privilege to play in European competition, it is something really nice," said the former CA San Lorenzo de Almagro player, a Spanish Cup winner with Espanyol in 2006. "On this occasion the tie just slipped through our fingers, but now we are going to work very hard to try to make sure that this kind of occasion becomes a regular thing here."