Midfielder Paul Hartley feels referee Manuel Gonzalez unjustly punished Scotland for playing their normal pressing game against Italy.Gonzalez played a huge role in Scotland's Euro 2008 downfall with a stoppage time decision to hand Italy a free-kick after Alan Hutton had been barged over near the touchline.

Christian Panucci met Andrea Pirlo's cross to make it 2-1 for the world champions and negate the need for France to secure a point in Ukraine to progress.

And Hartley argued the Spanish official had put Scotland up against it throughout the game with some harsh decisions.

Gonzalez - who refereed Liverpool's triumphant 2005 Champions League final - gave 27 fouls against the Scots.

Hartley said: "That's what you do in football, try and put teams on the backfoot. There wasn't a bad foul in the game.

"As you saw with some of the decisions, we didn't touch any players.

"If you are going to go into a football game and not tackle, then what's the point in playing?

"I thought he (Gonzalez) was poor. I didn't think he was strong enough, I thought he gave bad decisions against us but you have to put up with that in football, it's cruel."

While Hartley appeared distraught at the end of his team's qualifying hopes, he still found strength from their performances throughout the Group B campaign.

And the Celtic midfielder believes Scotland can build on their improvement when the 2010 World Cup qualifying games begin.

The Scots will be among the second seeds in Europe when the draw takes place next Sunday.

And Hartley will go into those games knowing that Scotland can match the best teams on the continent.

Alex McLeish's team recovered from the blow of Luca Toni's second-minute opener to carve out a number of openings against the World Cup holders.

Scotland were in the ascendancy after Barry Ferguson had bundled home the equaliser with 25 minutes remaining but James McFadden could not turn their best chance on target with Gianluigi Buffon stranded.

"You have got to take confidence and pride and make sure hopefully for the next campaign we are ready," 31-year-old Hartley said.

"We have a very good squad here.

"Yes, we are disappointed, don't get me wrong, because you want to be part of that European Championship and we are disappointed not to be there.

"But we can take a lot of confidence from the campaign.

"I think we showed against France that we can match them, we have beaten them twice.

"Once we got the equaliser, we were on the front foot.

"We looked like the team that were going to score the second goal."

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