Nicolas Lombaerts: “We`re ready to be champions”

Zenit`s Belgian defender, who took part in his team`s second goal against Sibir, gave his view on the match and shared his opinion about player rotation and the number of points the team has now.

– The end of the season is always more difficult than the beginning, – said Nicolas Lombaerts. – But we`re ready to be champions. After letting two goals buy, we brought it together, and scored as many goals as we needed for a good victory.

– The serious player rotation hasn`t changed the team`s play judging by the last two matches.

– Ya, exactly. All 20 of our players are ready to replace one another. Our match in Croatia showed that Zenit really is a great team, and has the ability to rotate the players without losing the quality of its play or points. That`s really good.

– There`s just a little ways to go before Zenit becomes champion.

– But that doesn`t mean that we already have enough points. When we won the championship in 2007 we needed to get 61 points. Now we`ve got 63 already, but that doesn`t guarantee us anything! This season there`s a really good title race, and we can`t afford to make any mistakes. Our opponents are very strong, and we need to win as many games as possible.

– The trip from Split to St. Petersburg to Novosibirsk took up a lot of energy. Did you have enough time to relax?

–– It was a very difficult trip for us. There was no time to relax. And we shouldn`t talk about England, where they play twice per week. There it`s a short distance from one city to another, no more than 40 minutes to an hour. But we had to fly 3–4 hours each time. They say that the distance from Split to Novosibirsk is equal to the distance from Vladivostok to Petersburg. So of course we`re tired. But we`re ready for that kind of thing, and judging by the scores of our games, we`re well prepared.