Chelsea football club have qualified for the quarter finals of the UEFA Champions League after beating Lille by an aggregate of 4-1. The European Champions won the game – remaining composed despite the recent troubles that has bedevilled the club.
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Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel to BT Sport: “Brilliant. It’s so nice so many fans are here to support the team, it feels brilliant. The quarter-finals is a big step. We showed resilience and mentality to overcome difficulties.
“We did what was necessary. We dug in and got a deserved win. It’s difficult here.
“Chelsea has this kind of culture within the club where we work every day. What I found from day one was a football first mentality. Everybody pushes the first team every three days, everybody goes to the limit and is focused on football.
“We’ve been trying to implement an atmosphere. This culture is already installed and this helps us now to focus with difficult and distracting times because it’s always there.
“We encourage the players. It feels so good we can still produce results and I’m proud.
“We weren’t so good in the first half. The pitch was horrible and it made things complicated. It was a new pitch not ready to play on. The tactics weren’t right in the first 20 minutes, I take responsibility. Then it was more fluid.
“It was very important to calm everyone down. We were lucky with the post.
“We hope and expect to carry on. We want to compete. It took a lot of sacrifice, we fought hard to be in the last eight. We’re excited for the draw. We have a game in Middlesbrough three days later.”
Chelsea won the match thanks to a sweet pass from Mason Mount to Cesar Azpilicueta who bundled it home in the stroke of full time for the match winner.
Chelsea goalscorer Cesar Azpilicueta on BT Sport: “It has not been a normal last few weeks but we have to do what is in our hands, which is train the best we can. Tonight it was a difficult game and of course we are happy to go through.
“I just put a leg and it went with my knee! I am not very used to scoring goals.
“In the first half we didn’t start very well, we knew it would be difficult, sometimes we played in the spaces and made a few mistakes – the reaction was good, we scored before half-time. If you go 1-0 down into half-time the second half would be difficult.
“This group fights against everything, we know we have to do the best we can on the pitch, we stick together and hopefully end up having a very good season.
“Sometimes it may be easier to lose focus, but that is not us, we have to keep playing every three days difficult games.”