{"id":6985,"date":"2014-03-18T13:16:43","date_gmt":"2014-03-18T13:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=6985"},"modified":"2014-03-18T13:16:43","modified_gmt":"2014-03-18T13:16:43","slug":"andre-villas-boas-agrees-deal-to-manage-zenit-st-petersburg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=6985","title":{"rendered":"Andre Villas-Boas agrees deal to manage Zenit St Petersburg"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AVB\"<\/a>Former Tottenham and Chelsea boss Andre Villas-Boas has agreed a two-year deal to manage Zenit St Petersburg, according to the Russian club.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

The 36-year-old, who was sacked as Spurs manager<\/a> in December, will replace Luciano Spalletti.<\/a><\/p>\n

“Zenit has agreed terms on a contract with new head coach Andre Villas-Boas,” said a statement on the club’s website.<\/p>\n

“Mr Villas-Boas will be presented in St Petersburg as Zenit’s new head coach on 20 March.”<\/p>\n

Spalletti was sacked after the club lost their Champions League last-16 first leg tie 4-2<\/a> at home to Borussia Dortmund and dropped to second in their domestic league.<\/p>\n

Sergey Semak was appointed as acting head coach but now Villas-Boas will assume the managerial reins a day after Wednesday’s second leg against Dortmund.<\/p>\n

Villas-Boas was part of Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho’s backroom staff before moving into management with Academica and Porto in his home country of Portugal.<\/p>\n

He won the league, cup and Europa League in his first season at Porto before taking over as Chelsea boss in June 2011, but was dismissed in March 2012<\/a> as his side struggled for form.<\/p>\n

Tottenham appointed him in July 2012 and he led them to fifth in the Premier League in his first season in charge as the club narrowly missed out on earning a Champions League qualification place.<\/p>\n

Spurs were seventh in the Premier League following a 5-0 defeat by Liverpool<\/a> in December when they decided to part company with Villas-Boas.<\/p>\n

He now takes over at Zenit, who are owned by state-controlled gas company Gazprom and are one of European football’s biggest spenders.<\/p>\n

They signed Brazilian striker Hulk<\/a> from Porto and Belgium midfielder Axel Witsel from Benfica for a combined total of \u00a364m in September 2012.<\/p>\n

Villas-Boas worked with Hulk during his time at Porto, while Portuguese duo Luis Neto and Danny are also part of Zenit’s squad.<\/p>\n

In December 2012, the club’s largest fans’ group, Landscrona, called for gay and non-white players to be excluded from the team.<\/a><\/p>\n

However, Venezuela striker Jose Salomon Rondon was signed<\/a> in January 2014 as he became the first black player to join the club following those comments.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Tottenham and Chelsea boss Andre Villas-Boas has agreed a two-year deal to manage Zenit St Petersburg, according to the Russian club.\u00a0 The 36-year-old, who was sacked as Spurs manager in December, will replace Luciano Spalletti. “Zenit has agreed terms on a contract with new head coach Andre Villas-Boas,” said a statement on the club’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":6992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29,3],"class_list":["post-6985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-dr-mahamudu-bawumia","tag-ghana-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}