No extra joy in eliminating Benfica, says Hulk

Thegoalmac can reveal that Hulk says he did not derive extra satisfaction from Zenit dumping Benfica out of the Champions League just because he used to play for the Eagles' bitter rivals Porto.

"We need back-to-back victories to move to the next phase," the Selecao star stated after Zenit completed one half of their mission. "Thank God we managed to score and win the game.


"It is special to win any game, regardless of the opponent. I played for four years in Porto and our biggest rivals were Benfica. But I always had respect for the club, I don't hate Benfica."

Meanwhile, Zenit boss Andre Villas-Boas took great encouragement from the way in which his side stuck to their task against Benfica and is hoping that they show similar resilience against Monaco.

"Our objective is to continue in the competition, so the win was important," the Portuguese stated. "Now we will look for a result in Monaco - we must believe.

"The only time we did not have control of the possession was in the first 10-15 minutes of the second half.
"In the rest of the game we had the initiative. Benfica defended well but fortunately we managed to get the goal to give us three points."