MOSCOW, June 1. /TASS/. Russian Premier League (RPL) football club Zenit Saint Petersburg completely trusts Head Coach Sergei Semak and it was one of the reasons for the club to prolong a contract with him for two more years, Yelena Ilyukhina, the chair of Zenit FC Board of Directors, told TASS on Monday.
The press office of Zenit St. Petersburg FC announced earlier in the day that the club’s executive management decided to extend its contract with Semak for two more years with an option of the contract’s prolongation for another season as well.
"We have never tried to keep it as a secret our intentions of holding on to Sergei Semak at the helm of our team," Ilyukhina said in an interview with TASS. "Negotiations were complicated but they resulted in a complete mutual understanding and defined a common position on the settlement of key-issues regarding the work with the team and the club as well."
"The club completely trusts Sergei Semak," she continued. "His personal and professional qualities instill us with confidence that we can entrust him not only with future successes of the team, but also with a follow-up gradual development and enhancement of the play, which are the basic tasks of a head coach."
Semak, who turned 44 in February, has been at the helm of Zenit St. Petersburg FC since May 2018, leading the club to win the 2018/2019 Russian Championship.
The RPL Executive Board announced a decision last month to resume matches of the Russian Football Championship on June 21. They had been postponed several times earlier in the year due to the ongoing global spread of the novel coronavirus.
Prior to the RPL shutdown, the league’s clubs completed 22 out of 30 scheduled rounds of the championship. On April 1, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) recommended restarting national football tournaments.
After 22 rounds of the 2019/2020 season of the Russian Championship, Zenit St. Petersburg, led by Head Coach Sergei Semak, ranks first in the national tournament’s standings with 50 points.
COVID-19
In late December 2019, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus - named COVID-19 by the WHO - have been reported in every corner of the globe, including Russia.
On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. According to the latest statistics, over 6,295,000 people have been infected worldwide and more than 374,400 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 2,864,800 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.
To date, a total of 414,878 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 175,877 patients having recovered from the disease. Russia’s latest data indicates 4,855 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.