"China has played a good game today. We lost not because we didn't play hard, but because of other factors," China's football head coach Vladimir Petrovic said here on Saturday night.

China lost to Qatar 1-0 at the World Cup qualifier. With three draw games and one loss, the chance of advancing to the final round became slim.

"We had a good chance to lead at the beginning," he said, referring to a shot that hit the bar in the 11th minute. "We were unlucky, and failed to seize the chance to score."

Only three minutes later, however, Qatar's player was pulled down in the box and won a penalty kick. Sebastian, Qatar's forward, sent the ball into the net and scored the only point in the whole game.

Petrovic said the Chinese team had planned to use more young players at first and more veteran players afterwards so to keep their physical strength. "However, the penalty interrupted our whole plan."

Petrovic blamed the loss to the penalty and referee's preference to Qatar. "Every time we could form an attack, the referee would interrupt the game. It happened in both the away and home games."

"We did create some opportunities in the second half, but we were too eager to score," he said. "To retrospect all the four games, we have some problems indeed. We will talk about those issues and try to solve them all."

(Xinhua News Agency June 8, 2008)