Basel freeze out Spartak in snowy Moscow to move up

Spartak have lost all five of their group games.

The Russian champions, who could have kept a slim chance of securing a UEFA Cup berth with a victory, pushed forward right from the opening whistle.

But Hernan Rossi silenced a small but vocal home crowd when he put Basel ahead in the 17th minute, scoring against the run of play.

The Argentine beat Spartak’s Brazilian playmaker Moises Pineiro to the ball as he latched on to a Herve Tim low cross and squeezed it past goalkeeper Maxim Levitsky from close range.

With temperatures dipping below freezing and light snow falling after the interval, the Swiss side were content to defend in numbers in the second half.

Spartak had only a handful of scoring chances in the entire match. Striker Alexander Danishevsky, who scored Spartak’s lone goal in this year’s competition when he netted in a 3-1 defeat to Liverpool two weeks ago, wasted the best chance for an equaliser.

The 18-year-old fired over the bar from six metres out late in the game before Christian Giminez, who replaced compatriot Rossi midway through the second half, sealed Basel’s first victory on Russian soil with a second goal a minute from time.

“We dominated in the second half, but once again we paid the price for making too many mistakes in defence,” Spartak assistant coach Viktor Samokhin said.

Tuesday’s match was played amid heavy security after Chechen guerrillas took more than 800 people hostage in a city theatre in the Russian capital two weeks ago.

It was initially scheduled for last Wednesday, but was delayed a week by UEFA as a mark of respect for more than 100 hostages, who died in an operation to storm the building. It was rescheduled for a second time following consultations with both clubs.