Chelsea
manager Jose Mourinho hailed his side’s “complete” performance after they
sealed their place in the last 16 of the Champions League with a 5-0 victory
at Schalke.
Goals from Willian, Didier Drogba, Ramires and a Jan Kirchhoff own goal
added to John Terry’s early header as the Premier League leaders ran riot in
Gelsenkirchen.
The emphatic victory means Chelsea have booked their spot in the knockout
stages with a match to spare, and Mourinho had no complaints over his side’s
performance.
“At the moment this team is very mature and very confident,” he said. “To
win 5-0 away in the Champions League is not normal. In Germany, it is even
less normal but the performance was very important.
“Every individual was complete. We are defending well because we are
defending with 11 players. We are attacking well because we are very
confident with ourselves and we also put lots of players in the attacking
progress. We are a good team.”
Tuesday’s victory was only the second time the west Londoners have scored
five away from home in the Champions League, and they’ve now netted 14 times
in this year’s competition, shipping just two goals on their way to winning
Group G.
Confident
Chelsea next take on Sunderland on Saturday Night Football, and the Blues
boss is refusing to take their stellar form for granted.
“A bad result is waiting for us but the reality is that the team is playing
really well and we have big self-belief and the team is very confident.
“It is important [to finish top]; you can imagine that this team goes to the
Europa League and wins but that is not what we want.
“We want to compete in the best competition against the best teams. It is
very important for the evolution of the team, very important for the
prestige of our club. We did it and we did it with one game left and it is
very important – in a difficult month like December - to have one match
against Sporting Lisbon where we don’t need the points to qualify or finish
first.”
top