Doha: Zenit St Petersburg will train in Qatar for 10 days ahead of their Champions League round of 16 match against Borussia Dortmund, the Russian club has announced on its website.
Zenit will host the German giants on February 25 at Petrovsky Stadium in the Champions League match.
Doha is one of the twin winter training stops for the Blue-White-Sky Blues as they gear up for the second half of the season. Israel will be the second one.
Luciano Spalletti’s team will begin their winter training at the state-of-the-art Aspire Academy from today.
Zenit will remain in Doha until January 23, and will play four friendly matches during training camp, one which will be against Red Bull Salzburg on January 23.
Red Bull are in Qatar as part of their winter training programme.
“We will play on the 18th of January a friendly game in Salzburg against Bayern Munich. The day after we will leave to Doha and stay there till the 29th. During that period we will have two games: on 23rd against Zenit St Petersburg and on the 27th against Al-Merrikh SC of Sudan,” an official of Red Bull Salzburg told The Peninsula.
Red Bull has won the Austrian national championship seven times, and came in second place last year. This year Red Bull is leading the Austrian Bundesliga by 11 points over its nearest competitors after 20 rounds.
Furthermore, Red Bull, coached by the German Roger Schmidt, has advanced to the Europa League round of 32, where it will play Ajax Amsterdam.
Zenit is one of the several leading European football clubs who have been training in Qatar for the last few weeks.
Paris St Germain (PSG), the Ligue 1 defending champions, spend six days in Qatar as part of their winter training camp which culminated with a friendly match against La Liga giants Real Madrid, with Real winning the January 2 match 1-0.
Two other European giants, Bayern Munich and FC Schalke 04, both from the Bundesliga, chose Qatar as a venue for the winter training camp this year.
Zenit St Petersburg squad to Qatar:
Goalkeepers: Yury Lodygin, Vyacheslav Malafeev and Egor Baburin.
Defenders: Cristian Ansaldi, Domenico Criscito, Nicolas Lombaerts, Luis Neto, Tomas Hubocan, Igor Smolnikov, Alexander Anyukov, Aleksandar Lukovic and Jamal Khodjaniyazov.
Midfielders: Danny, Roman Shirokov, Oleg Shatov, Konstantin Zyryanov, Victor Fayzulin, Andrey Arshavin, Axel Witsel, Vladimir Bystrov, Anatoly Tymoshchuk and Ivan Solovyov.
Forwards: Hulk, Alexander Bukharov and Alexander Kerzhakov. THE PENINSULA
