Advocaat delight at Super Cup win

Saturday 30th August 2008

by www.espnstar.com/football

Zenit St Petersburg's Dick Advocaat has praised his team after their 2-1 UEFA Super Cup defeat of Manchester United.
The lively Pavel Pogrebnyak opened the scoring for the Russians just a minute before the interval and new signing Danny doubled their lead on the hour mark.
A 73rd-minute strike from Nemanja Vidic set the stage for a nailbiting ending, but the 2008 UEFA Cup winners held on to a deserved victory at the Stade Louis II in Monaco.
"I think if we see the chances we created tonight, we deserved the win," said Advocaat.
"The start was a little bit difficult and we had problems with the movement of our strikers for the first 15 minutes.
"Then we created chances and unfortunately we did not score enough, but overall I think it was a well-deserved win."
Advocaat afforded himself the luxury of leaving coveted striker Andrei Arshavin on the bench for the first half, but he denied his choice had anything to do with speculation linking the striker with a transfer to Tottenham.
"I should perhaps also have to explain why other players were not playing," he said.
"You make a decision and that was that Dominguez played the first half and Arshavin the second. It's as simple as that."
"They (Tottenham) had several weeks of time to buy him and they did not offer 22 million like everybody has been writing but just 16 million.
"I think that Arshavin costs more than 16 million."
However, Advocaat has left the door ajar to a deal going through this weekend.
"In principle, this is the squad I like," he said when asked if he was looking to bolster his squad before the transfer deadline.
"There is no need to buy new players. We have bought two players - a central defender and an extra striker - and that works, if everybody stays, because you never know."
After setting Europe alight on the way to success in the UEFA Cup last season, and with this impressive victory over the English champions, Advocaat believes Zenit can now enter the Champions League next month with high expectations.
"I think it is not an easy draw for us, but we did really well in the UEFA Cup and why not in the Champions League too," he added.
"Tonight we gave a warning so everybody knows what to expect, but the Champions League is a bit different to today, which was in principle a friendly match, although an important one."
Zenit will kick off their Champions League campaign at Juventus on September 17 and face Real Madrid and BATE Borisov in Group H.
But Friday's win over United will surely leave Juve and Real in no two minds that they have another rival for a place in the second round.