Determined Zenit FC

Zenit won 3:2 in the game with Benfica, and that doesn’t grant the Russian team a calm return game, on the contrary, the Portuguese club stands a good chance on its own pitch, if we take the two goals made on the away ground into account. Nevertheless, the Russian team has a psychological advantage on the eve of the upcoming game.

Despite the fact that their opponents were in brilliant shape (the Portuguese Championship is now in full swing), the Zenit players didn’t show themselves to be inferior in any sense. Moreover, Zenit managed to turn the game in its favor twice.

The first ball was scored by a Benfica player in the 20th minute of the game. This episode was due to a mistake by Zenit’s goalkeeper (not his only mistake during this game).

After missing this ball, Zenit turned to a more aggressive playing strategy and evened the score 7 minutes later. In the middle of the second half the Petersburg team’s player Sergey Semak scored another goal after a virtuosic combination. However, almost at the end of the game Zenit’s goalkeeper returned a ball poorly, which resulted in another goal for Benfica. Despite this misfortune Zenit didn’t lose its enthusiasm or resolve and managed to take the Portuguese footballers by surprise and Roman Shirokov brought victory to his team. Roman Shirokov repeated the 1995/1996 record of Yuri Nikiforov for the number of balls scored in one season, and he still has a chance of breaking the record, at least in the return match with Benfica.

In another Champions League game AC Milan crushed London's Arsenal with unexpected ease. The game in Milan ended 4:0 in favour of the hosts.