Football
ESPN staff 8y

Andre Villas-Boas urges Hulk to fire Zenit St Petersburg past Benfica

Zenit St Petersburg manager Andre Villas-Boas has urged his Brazilian forward Hulk to fire the Russian club into the quarterfinals of the Champions League.

Zenit are 1-0 down in their round-of-16 tie against Benfica, following Jonas' injury-time goal at the Estadio da Luz, and Villas-Boas has told reporters to expect a better performance from Hulk after his disappointing showing in that game.

"Hulk is eager to play and win," Villas-Boas said. "He has already written his name into the history of Zenit, and continues to do so today.

"Any player can have an off day, this is football. We believe that tomorrow he will be able to fix our mistakes, create chances and take them."

Zenit were held to a goalless draw by FK Krasnodar on Saturday as the Russian Premier League returned from its long winter break. But Villas-Boas goes into the second leg with the squad boosted by the January arrivals of Aleksandr Kokorin, Yuri Zhirkov and Mauricio, and the manager has revealed that he is planning on making changes to the side that started the first leg.

"We will have to make some changes to the line-up," AVB said. "Benfica always play very compact. They are good in combination play. It is always difficult to find space in how they set up defensively, but we must do that."

Benfica head to the Petrovsky Stadium on the back of a 1-0 win over Sporting on Saturday -- a result that saw them leapfrog their Lisbon neighbours to the top of the Portuguese Liga table. It was a 12th victory in 13 matches for Benfica, whose 2-1 defeat at home to Porto last month was their only loss since mid-December.

Despite their fine run of form, Benfica's Brazilian forward Jonas accepts it will take another determined effort to return from Russia with a positive result.

"Zenit have been playing some good football, they always do well in their league, and in the Champions League they had a good group stage," Jonas said. "The away leg against Zenit will be very difficult, especially because of the weather conditions, which can affect things a bit. They are used to cold weather, we are not, so [there will be] lots of difficulties.

"Now [in the knockout stage] it is kill or be killed. It's different from playing six matches in the group stage -- it's only two games and you can't let your guard down because that can cost you qualification, so you need to double your focus."

Benfica coach Rui Vitoria is missing injured centre-backs Luisao and Lisandro Lopez, while Jardel and full-back Andre Almeida are suspended and goalkeeper Julio Cesar has a thigh problem.

Zenit have reached the knockout stages in three of the past five campaigns, but have so far never made it into the last eight of Europe's elite club competition.

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