he did all that with Asamoah and Barzagli out for most of the season, an out of form Vidal, Llorente who went AWOL this year and Pogba injured for the past 2 months. managed to refresh Evra, who looked finished, got Bonucci to concentrate, found Marchisio's perfect position, gave Morata confidence despite not being the one who brought him here, unleashed Tevez's potential by giving him freedom up front and also fit Pereyra into our system in such way that now we're solid on counter-attacks too.
I'm sure it might be just a coincidence.
edit: I'm happy with semi-finals, realistically we're still behind Barca, Real and Bayern. but tournament football is not always about the better squad. let's see what happens, you never know in the CL. Berlin is not so far away.