winning is a total victory: Villas Boas

The Portuguese coach was thrilled with his players for extending their superb start to the campaign with victory in their opening Champions League encounter

Andre Villas-Boas said Zenit St-Petersburg's 2-0 win away to Benfica was a total success and then turned his focus to securing an early passage through to the last-16.

Former Porto man Hulk put the visitors 1-0 up at the Estadio da Luz, before goalkeeper Artur was sent off for

the home side after just 18 minutes.

Ex-Benfica star Axel Witsel then doubled Zenit's lead and that proved to be enough as the Russian Premier League outfit saw the game out, much to the pleasure of Villas-Boas.

He said: "The first half was good for us. Benfica struggled after the red card. In the second half we wanted to get the third, but we always controlled the match. We had some chances that we missed but Benfica could have also made it 2-1, but it's excellent to win away.

"Doing it in a hard group such as this one was fundamental, moreover in a stadium that hadn't seen a home defeat for so long. It was a total success to us, in a good performance, controlling the game."

The result leaves Zenit joint top of Group C with Monaco, who saw off Bayer Leverkusen, though Villas-Boas was predictably swift to play down talk of securing a swift passage through to the last-16.

"It's premature to speak about it [last 16], it depends on the result of the next match. If we beat Monaco then we could be in a good position to go through. In an even group it was important to score points away. Let's see what we now do at home."