Zenit beat Advocaat's former club Rangers 2-0 thanks to goals from Igor Denisov and Konstatin Zyryanov, only the second time a Russian side has won a European trophy.

The Zenit players were congratulated in the dressing room afterwards by former Russian prime minister Viktor Zubkov, while Advocaat was phoned by Putin.

Advocaat said: "Winning a prize like this doesn't come often in life. I am very happy and very proud to we have won.

"After the way we have played in this tournament we have really deserved this."

The teetotal Advocaat also had to dodge a champagne soaking from his celebrating players.

He added: "The players tried to throw the champagne over my head afterwards but I was too quick!"

The 60-year-old Dutchman admitted he now faces a struggle to hang on to star players such as man of the match Andrei Arshavin - he lost Martin Skrtel to Liverpool in the January transfer window.

He added: "That will happen, I have no doubts about that and we will have to start again.

"That is the problem if you become successful - such as happened with Skrtel sold to Liverpool. We have to keep those players to become a better team.

"It's not only Arshavin - other players also who are very important for this team - and we need to try to buy three or four others to make the squad better and rotate a little bit.

"Only 12 or 13 players played in almost all the games and that's difficult."

In terms of the match, Advocaat insisted the Russians had deserved to win what is his first European trophy.

"It was important to keep organised and in the second half it opened up and we scored two brilliant goals. Over 90 minutes we were the better team and deserved to win.

"I have won many championships but never the UEFA Cup before so now it's almost everything."