No - I'm not shocked Juve reached the finalBy this reasoning it's a shock that Juve are in the CL finals. I mean, Serie A is very weak at the moment and has been for a while.
Think of all the managers who've managed amazing squads but never won anything. Yes Zenit are stronger & expected to win, so achieving that is a job well done. If you look at his time at Chelsea, it was player power that undermined him. JT, Lampard, Drogba etc... It is so obvious as they suddenly started winning with the same squad when Di Matteo took over. He didn't even change the fucking tactics. Chelsea players just played better cos the man they liked was in charge. Had AvB had free reign I think a lot of those old guard would've been sold and Oscar etc been bought earlier.
Juve have dominated their league but I wouldn't call Seria A a weak league - there are numerous teams that are pretty strong in it, In fact it's catching us up and could potentially over take our coefficent and fourth CL spot
Zenit are expected to win so achieving it is doing what he's supposed to do, but nothing he didn't already do at Porto and nothing that suggests he's suddenly become capable of succeeding at a bigger club, like Chelsea for example
In fact as the former Zenit player mentioned with a team as strong as he had compared to his opponents he should have wrapped the league up sooner and he should have performed better in Europe, failed to get out of the CL group stages and was dumped form the Europa. Job done reasonably well rather than job well done I'd suggest
You can call it player power and make excuses for his time at Chelsea if you want, fact is he got his tactics wrong and wasn't capable and got exposed as a fraud way out of his depth. Even if the player thing is real, if he were capable of managing at a top club he would have been capable of dealing with the player power - the fact that he couldn't only further supports the notion that he's incapable
As I said he's done at Porto and now Zenit what he should do - that shouldn't be dismissed as it is still an achievement but it should be put in to context and it is not on the same level as having to manage top teams in high pressure positions against top level opposition in my opinion. So far his time at Chelsea and then with us proved that he was incapable of doing so, but his time at Zenit and Porto has proved he's capable of producing what he should produced when he has the strongest team in a league with the best players
He's still young and could well go on to be a good manager, who knows, but for now the evidence suggests he is not and in my opinion winning the league with Zenit does nothing to change that (the whole point of this discussion thread) and the fact that he previously had success at Porto does nothing to prove he is capable either (the whole point of the debate between you and I) as he already did that before proving himself incapable in with Chelsea and in the EPL