Smith blames referee as Scots come back to earth

SCOTLAND suffered their first defeat of the Euro 2008 qualifying campaign with a 2-0 reverse in Ukraine.

Chelsea forward Andriy Shevchenko converted from the penalty spot late on, after Olexander Kucher had given the home side the lead.

In a further blow for the Scots, a red card for Steven Pressley rules him out of the next match against Georgia, along with James McFadden and Darren Fletcher who both picked up their second bookings of the campaign.

Pressley saw red for preventing Shevchenko’s goalscoring opportunity so now he misses the Georgia, along with Pressley.

However, Scotland manager Walter Smith has accused the referee of contributing to their defeat. And Smith insists Swedish official Martin Hansson has wrongly robbed him of a trio of key players for that game.

“Just as we were about to make a change and hopefully put some more balls into the box, there was an ordering off, which effectively killed the game,” he said.

“It was an ordering off for preventing a goalscoring opportunity but I don’t think it was a goalscoring opportunity because Gary Caldwell was going to get the ball.

“The Pressley decision was the wrong decision. You’re always going to be upset at the result but I was more disappointed by the yellow cards for fouls which I felt were no worse than the opposition’s,” he said.

Scotland defeated France at Hampden on Saturday to remain at the summit of Group B but Smith believes the decisions went against his players in that game too.

“The referee treated Scotland differently from Ukraine and I felt that Saturday’s game against France was the same,” he added.

“Maybe the referees think the British sides are overly aggressive but I don’t think Scotland are overly aggressive.”

Shevchenko converted from the spot with two minutes to go when the referee awarded a very dubious penalty when Robbie Neilson was judged to have fouled the Chelsea forward.

Ukraine’s had opened the scoring in the 60th minute. Shevchenko floated a free-kick into the box and McFadden’s attempted clearance came off Sviderskiy and broke to Kucher, who drilled low into the net.

But Smith said: “I didn’t see what happened because the fourth official was standing in front of me.”

The Scots may have lost their 100% record in the qualifying campaign but Smith was far from surprised at how tough a match it was in Kiev’s Olympic Stadium. “It was as difficult a game as we thought it would be,” he said.

UKRAINE: Shovkovskiy, Nesmachniy, Sviderskiy, Kucher, Rusol, Tymoschuk, Shelayev, Gusev (Milevskiy 62), Kalinichenko (Vorobey 76), Shevchenko, Voronin (Shershun 90).

SCOTLAND: Gordon, Neilson (McManus 89), Weir, Pressley, Graham Alexander, Caldwell, Ferguson, Fletcher, Hartley, Miller, McFadden (Boyd 73).

Ref: Martin Hansson (Sweden).