Russia were held to a 0-0 draw in Armenia to lose sole leadership of Group B in Euro 2012 qualifying.
After surviving some early pressure from the hosts, Russia firmly grabbed the initiative after 25 minutes, when one of the Armenian defenders nearly found the back of his own net.
Dick Advocaat’s men controlled the game and managed to win several corners, with all of them being taken by captain Andrey Arshavin.
He once managed to find the head of defender Sergey Ignashevich, but the ball went centimeters wide of Armenia’s far post.
After the restart the hosts nearly caught Russia on the counter-attack, but Yura Movsisyan failed to beat keeper Igor Akinfeev from close range.
Arshavin and co created plenty of chances in the second half. Alan Dzagoev, Roman Shirokov and Arshavin himself had good chances to open the scoring, but lacked accuracy, leaving home goalie Roman Berezovsky without any serious work to do, so the game ended 0-0.
In the other Group B games, the Republic of Ireland beat visiting Macedonia 2-1, while Slovakia got a narrow 1-0 win in Andorra.
The point taken in Yerevan sees Russia with 10 points after 5 games, which is the same as Slovakia and Ireland now have. The Armenians are right behind with 8 points.-0 score in the other semis.