Zenit gets a day off

Zenit held its last practice in its reduced size on Tuesday at Udelny Park.

Together with the Zenit main squad players who didn`t take part in matches of their national teams – Alessandro Rosina, Fernando Meira, Ivica Krizanac, Sergey Semak, Dmitry Borodin, and Viktor Faizulin – the practice also featured players from Zenit`s youth team, including Andrey Zaitsev, Roland Gigolaev, Stanislav Matyash, Sergey Petrov, Evgeny Bashkirov and Maxim Kanunnikov. Practices in this format, like we wrote earlier, have been taking place since Saturday. Those Zenit players who aren`t practicing and playing for their national teams should be in top form for Zenit`s match on Saturday with Amkar.

Despite the cold weather and the unusual look of the team, the practice was anything but slow: the exercises offered to the players by the head coaches changed one after another, and two hours went by like lightning. At the end of the practice the footballers broke into two teams, and played a scrimmage together with some of the coaches. That said, when the final whistle was blown ending a hard-fought tie not all of the players left the field. Luciano Spalletti spent about an extra half hour working with the youth team players.

Zenit players will have the day off on Wednesday, and on Thursday will meet at the Udelny Park practice facility to prepare for Saturday`s match with Amkar Perm.