How Sergei Semak’s tactics have guided Zenit to a fifth-consecutive Russian Premier League title – scout report

At the end of the 2017/18 season, Zenit St Petersburg sat fifth and managed to earn a place in the third qualifying round for the UEFA Europa League. However, it was a disastrous campaign given the expectations every season for the club. 

Former Manchester City and Internazionale boss Roberto Mancini was the man who oversaw this mess. By the end of the campaign, Zenit had failed to win the Russian Premier League title for three years straight. Something had to change and so the hierarchy called on an old friend. 

Having been the assistant manager to Luciano Spalletti at the Krestovsky Stadium after retiring as a Zenit player in 2016, Sergei Semak was announced as the new head coach. Semak already had experience in the hot seat, acting as the caretaker boss for a brief period following Spalletti’s departure from the club in 2014. 

But with other experiences such as Russia’s assistant manager for two years from 2014 to 2016 and FC Ufa’s head coach during the 2017/18 season, Semak came back a more mature tactician. 

Fast-forward five years later, Semak has just lifted his fifth-straight title with the Russian giants and has fully cemented himself into the club’s history books. 

With a squad full of Brazilian talents and one that blends youth and experience, Semak’s team won the Russian Premier League this season in style once more. 

This tactical analysis piece will be an analysis, looking at how Semak’s tactics guided Zenit to the title for the fifth-consecutive season. 

Risky build-up play 

The team’s style of play is a blend of positional and functional. As we are about to analyse, during the build-up phase, Zenit’s set-up is positional, with players adhering to strict principles about how to play out from deep to bypass the opposition’s press. 

Semak still uses formations as a reference point for his players but the formation is only really seen during the more ‘positional’ phases of Zenit’s play and during the defensive phase. This season, Russia’s champions have primarily lined up in a 4-3-3, although the 47-year-old hasn’t been afraid to chop and change the structure in certain games throughout the campaign. 

This was quite different to last season’s most used formation which was a 3-4-3. Zenit lost Dejan Lovren in the summer as the former Liverpool defender returned to Lyon. However, the former Europa League winners did replace Lovren’s experience with the youthful Robert Renan, who was being tipped for greatness back home in his native Brazil. 

However, higher up the pitch, especially in and around the final third, the side’s style becomes more functional as Semak takes off the shackles and allows his players to create opportunities according to their own interpretation of space and relationships with teammates. Formations become irrelevant at that point in time. 

Semak believes that constantly having the ball is the best way to achieve this, hence why the Russian Premier League champions have registered 60.4 percent possession on average in the league, more than any other side. Spartak Moskva are in second place