Sergei Semak: "We missed the atmosphere the fans create in the stadium"

The Zenit boss spoke to the media ahead of the Russian Cup game with Arsenal Tula on Saturday. 
Sergei Semak: "We missed the atmosphere the fans create in the stadium"

How are the team feeling before the first official match of 2021?

The team are fine, but I would like it to be better. Unfortunately, we’ve lost a large number of players for various reasons, but this is the reality of the current year. We’re in good spirits and awaiting the restart of the season and are preparing for a difficult and important match for us. 

How are the injured player’s recoveries going?

We have no news on this, neither positive or negative. We’ve told you everything already. Everything is going according to the medical staff’s plan for these players. 

Zenit are getting ready to face Arsenal Tula in St. Petersburg. What’s next in your preparations for the resumption of the RPL?

Our training camps are planned around six months in advance and no one could have imagined that it would be so cold here right now. Recently the winters have been more comfortable for training. We’ve been training outside, but when that became too difficult, we moved our training session to the stadium. We are getting ready to play here and we want the players to get used to the pitch.

How is the pitch at the Gazprom Arena?

It will quickly become quite unusable quickly, but we have no other options, either at the training centre or the stadium, the club is trying to do their best, but we know that everything will be very difficult with the pitch until April or May ...

The final matches of 2020 were played without fans, but up to 25,000 people are expected at the stadium on Saturday, are you looking forward to the fans returning?

Yes, this is the second piece of positive news. We're pleased the league is restarting and that the supporters will be returning to the stadium. It's great! We missed the atmosphere they create in the stadium. 

What can you say about Arsenal Tula?

They haven’t changed their squad make-up, like many other clubs. They play attacking and aggressive football and are an experienced team, with players who have been in the RPL for a long time and are a well-prepared team, both technically and tactically. They are a tough side and I think it will be an interesting match.

How do you feel about clubs who were in European competition joining the Russian Cup at a later stage?

It's good for us because we haven’t had a single free window this autumn with the Champions League and RPL. Many teams playing in Europe sacrifice the Russian Cup, because it is impossible to prioritise them all, especially with the long flights, and often the second-string line-ups play. But overall this is a big plus for us, making the fixture list slightly easier for us and we are ready to play. It's harder for teams that start earlier, but for clubs participating in European competition, it is good. The fact that we’ve played one less game might not be nice for other teams, although I don’t think that it’s super difficult.