Sergey Semak is RPL Manager of the Season

Zenit St. Petersburg manager Sergey Semak has won the award for RPL Manager of the Season.

The voting was completed by the captains and coaches of all 16 RPL teams, the head coach of the Russian national team Stanislav Cherchesov, as well as representatives of the media and experts of the MATCH PREMIER TV channel. Semak’s competitors were all coaches who had worked in the past season at RPL club.

The 44-year-old became a champion with the St. Petersburg club for the second season in a row and set a league record for the fastest title; Zenit secured first place on matchday 26 thanks to a 4-2 away win over Krasnodar. Despite the early victory, the Blue-White-Sky Blues did not suffer a single defeat in the remaining games and repeated the Russian record for the number of points scored in a 16-team season; 72, the same number as Spartak had in 1999.

After winning the RPL, Zenit won the Russian Cup to complete the second domestic double in the club's history. The first came in 2010 under the leadership of Luciano Spalletti, with whom Semak won the championship as a player that year.