ST PETERSBURG, Russia (AFP) - Two goals from Zenit St Petersburg's Pavel Pogrebnyak earned the Russian side a 2-0 victory over Marseille to book a quarter-final berth in the UEFA Cup here on Wednesday.

Marseille's conceded away goal in the 3-1 first leg victory in France proved the deciding factor as they went out of Europe's second-tier club competition on away goals after a 3-3 aggregate scoreline.

"I was really impressed by my players who showed a great quality of play on a difficult pitch," said Zenit's Dutch coach Dick Advocaat. "The away goal was the good news of this tie."

The defeat ended France's participation in this season's club competitions.

"We weren't able to produce Marseille's game of the past few weeks. It's our first blow of the year," said coach Eric Gerets. "Even if we could have scored one or two more goals in the first leg we had some chances this evening.

"Unfortunately, collectively and individually it wasn't there. I felt we didn't have what it took to fight to the death on the pitch."

Marseille's Mathieu Valbuena, Djibril Cisse and Mamadou Niang all had chances to earn a goal for Gerets' men but it was Pogrebnyak who imposed himself in the scoring stakes.

Andrei Arshavin started the move for the first goal in the 38th minute. He passed the ball to Konstantin Zyrianov who set up Pogrebnyak to beat the offside trap and the striker shot past Marseille keeper Steve Mandanda.

Cisse could have got an equaliser four minutes later but the former top scorer in the French league, set on his way by Valbuena, fired straight at keeper Viacheslav Malafeev.

Zenit, who had the better of Marseille in the ballwinning stakes, could have made the most of a poor spell by Gerets' side just after the break but later in the half Marseille lifted themselves and Niang had a shot which just missed the Russians' goal.

The second and decisive goal came in the 77th minute when Fatih Tekke got a touch to feed Pogrebnyak for his second strike, and, despite a late flurry from Niang and Cisse, it was the home crowd which celebrated victory.

The defeat was even more bitter for the French as Marseille defender Ronald Zubar complained of racist chants by some Russian fans directed against him and black teammates Charles Kabore and Andre Ayew.

"They threw a banana at us and made monkey sounds," complained the player from the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe.

"It's not great. That makes the defeat worse, while they had everything to celebrate. We would have preferred that the match was stopped and the individuals removed."