After Chelsea’s surprise 1-0 loss at Crystal Palace in the Premier League, the club will be looking to hold on to their best chance of silverware when they face PSG in the Champions League. PHOTO: AFP
PARIS:
Jose Mourinho has ruled his Chelsea side out of the Premier League title race, but he believes they will bounce back from domestic disappointment against Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) in the Champions League on Wednesday.
The Chelsea manager questioned his players’ mentality after a surprise 1-0 loss at Crystal Palace led to them being knocked off top spot in the Premier League by Liverpool.
Mourinho loves to play mind games, but with Manchester City poised to leapfrog the Blues by winning their games in hand, it may be true that Chelsea’s best chance of silverware now lies with the Champions League.
And the Portuguese insists that his team will rise to the occasion as they face the Ligue 1 champions-elect at the Parc des Princes in the first leg of their quarter-final tie.
“Paris is the kind of match they feel comfortable to play,” said Mourinho ahead of the trip to France. “It is a big match and a great stadium with top quality.
Despite that, he says that the tie is finely poised, with PSG having emerged as a leading continental force in the last two years, spending astronomical sums to attract the likes of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Brazil captain Thiago Silva to France.
“They have some of the best players in the world playing together in the same team, so they are a very powerful team,” said Mourinho of a side who lost on away goals to Barcelona at the same stage last season.
“They are big, big, big candidates.”
PSG have not lost in 28 home European games and are currently on a club record-breaking run of nine straight wins in all competitions. They are running away with the Ligue 1 title and come into April 13 points clear of nearest challengers Monaco. They were some way short of their best in Friday’s 1-0 win at Nice, but coach Laurent Blanc admits that thoughts were already on Chelsea.
“We can say that the players were already thinking about Chelsea. On Wednesday we will need to do better in the final third,” said Blanc.
“The best preparation (for Chelsea) was to win and, while we didn’t play brilliantly against Nice, we got the result. Sometimes there are games like that.”
Bale targeting Real revenge against Dortmund
Real Madrid winger Gareth Bale believes his side has recovered from two successive league defeats as they look to exact revenge on Borussia Dortmund for their Champions League semi-final defeat last season.
Bale scored a double as Real responded from losing to Barcelona and Sevilla last week to beat Rayo Vallecano 5-0 on Saturday to remain in third place in La Liga, three points adrift of leaders Atletico Madrid.
However, it is a Champions League quarter-final clash against the Germans that has whetted the Welshman’s appetite as he admitted these are the type of games for which he left Tottenham Hotspur for Real last summer.
“I think it was important we responded well and got everything back on track,” he told Real Madrid TV.
“We’re massively looking forward to the Dortmund game. That is why you want to be playing football is to play in the big games.
“We are fully focused on Wednesday night and hopefully we can do a good job.”
Published in The Express Tribune, April 2nd, 2014.
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the defeat of chelsea today in france was not bad but in england i have hope that chelsea will make it through the semi finals