For “Zenit” last season turned out to be controversial. The team of Sergei Semak suffered a complete fiasco in the Champions League. The Russian champion scored only one point in six group stage matches and finished last, being behind the third line by as much as seven points. Certainly a club with serious ambitions cannot score such a result. At the same time, in the Russian championship the “blue-white-blue” did not experience any serious problems. For some time, Zenit was pressured by Spartak, CSKA and Lokomotiv, but in the end they managed to break away from the red-whites by as much as eight points. In the offseason Andrey Lunev left the team. The goalkeeper moved to German Bayer. In preparation for the season Zenit did not play many friendly matches. In the last one the St. Petersburg club beat Karlsruhe with a score 3:1. Vilmar Barrios, who played in the America’s Cup in the summer, will definitely not help the team today. On the eve of the Super Cup Dejan Lovren joined the team. There are also questions about the readiness of Serdar Azmun and players who took part in Euro 2020. Players did not go through the full cycle of preparation for the season.
In the last season Sturm closed the top three winners of the national championship. For the team from Graz this is a good achievement, which made it possible for the team to calmly prepare for the new Bundesliga season. The club’s management managed to keep the roster, so in the new season the team claims to at least repeat the achievement. However, in the preseason games Christian Ilzer’s wards have not yet demonstrated their former ease. Therefore, for Sturm, a simple victory in the match will be quite enough.
