Serbian midfielder Milan Nikolic fired the hosts ahead at Pakhtakor Stadium after just six minutes but the home side were unable to add to their tally during an evenly-balanced encounter.

And after the visitors slowly found their feet, Al Ittihad were rewarded with a potentially crucial away goal as Al Saqri equalised with 19 minutes remaining following a fortunate deflection to leave the tie finely balanced ahead of next week’s second leg.

Calderon, however, felt his side deserved far more than the score line suggested.

“We played only to win. We tried to play for a win until the end of the game but football is football and sometimes this happens,” said the Argentine.

“We deserved to win. In the second match in Saudi Arabia we will only play for a win despite having an away goal.

“We couldn’t take advantage of the chances we created in front of goal. I can say for sure that we deserved to win. From the first minute, to when Pakhtakor scored an undeserved goal, to the end of the match, we deserved to win.”

Pakhtakor boss Viktor Djalilov, meanwhile, was more circumspect.

“I think a draw is a fair result as we had clear chances to score. Al Ittihad also had their chances but if you count them, I think the right result is a draw,” he said.

“As we expected the match was tough, we don’t face teams like Al Ittihad in the local league so we were maybe nervous.

“They are one of the hardest teams we have faced in this competition, I can only remember Al Hilal who were at the same level.

“If we analyse the match we can find many faults. Of course I would like to see more speed, more dribbling, but over the years in the Uzbekistan League there has not been much competition, which is why the players are not used to playing under pressure.”

Djalilov also defended his decision to deploy only one striker from the start in the form of Alexander Geynrikh.

“Of course I would like to have forwards like Al Ittihad. You can see in their squad they have three very good, high level forwards from Morocco, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia,” he added.

“They had a very strong attack but we played to our ability. We couldn’t play attacking football because I saw how Umm Salal (in the group stage) played open football against Al Ittihad and lost, so it was impossible for us to do that..

“In play-off games, the final result is important - 1-0 is better than 2-1 - so that is why when we were leading we wanted to keep our tactics the same.

“Maybe it was my fault that I didn’t change the tactics but you cannot say for certain.”