The stakes will be high on Wednesday evening at Stamford Bridge when Chelsea host Paris Saint-Germain in the second leg of their UEFA Champions League round of 16. With the aggregate score tied at 1-1 and an away goal in hand, Chelsea hold a slight advantage but everything is still very much to play for on both sides.
Chelsea manager José Mourinho, a two-time champion of Europe with Porto and Inter Milan, is no stranger to the big stage that his squad will be playing on come Wednesday night. While the pressure is high for the Blues, who were considered one of the favourites to win this tournament at its outset, there is an air of calm around the club given the fact that its manager and a core of its players – including European Champions like Didier Drogba, John Terry, Gary Cahill and Petr Cech – are very familiar with the stresses of European competition.
“Experience helps to sleep good tonight,” Mourinho said at his pre-match press conference on Tuesday evening. “We feel comfortable. It’s one more game.”
The Special One even went as far to say that Wednesday’s match, which will decide which European giant will advance to the final eight of this year’s Champions League competition, is not a very special night, but rather an ordinary one by Chelsea’s standards. The Portuguese made sure to note his great respect for PSG and the talent level of its players, but said that these kinds of games are nothing new for him or for his club.
“Not really,” Mourinho replied when asked if Wednesday’s match was an extra special one. “[PSG] are very good players and a very good team, but this is what we do season after season.”
Even with the manager’s calm, collected approach, the importance of Champions League success is not lost on his players. Cesc Fàbregas, who has yet to win a European title during his career at Arsenal, Barcelona and now Chelsea, was not in awe of the gravity that accompanies the Champions League knockout rounds but was clear about how much advancing in the competition means to him personally.
“If you ask every football player what they want to win in their career they would say the World Cup and Champions League,” Fàbregas told reporters Tuesday.
Chelsea are fortified not only by their deep runs in UCL competition in recent years, but also by recent pressure-packed fixtures in the Capital One Cup. The Blues needed to dig deep to eliminate Liverpool over two hard-fought legs in the semi-final, including a 120-minute grinder at the Bridge in the second leg, and are now fresh off a victory over Tottenham in the cup final at Wembley Stadium.
“From my [past] experience, when we unlocked the fear of the quarter final and the big stage we felt we could be champions,” Fàbregas said. “Once we did that, we were unstoppable. We have to believe we are the best and can cope with every situation.”
Cahill, who started in Chelsea’s 2012 Champions League final against Bayern Munich, had similar sentiments when speaking about the importance of the League Cup triumph to Chelsea’s young squad.
“The cup final was huge in terms of the atmosphere around the club and the dressing room,” Cahill said in an interview with Chelsea’s official web site. “We were desperate as a team, as a squad, to win that game. It’s the first time this group – a newish group formed at the start of last season and before this season – has reached the end of a competition together.”
That experience, combined with the experience of its aforementioned Champions League veterans, could go a long way in preparing Chelsea’s younger, less experienced players for the pressure they will face on Wednesday and in future cup competitions. With the atmosphere around the club buzzing, Chelsea are now able to approach Wednesday’s second leg with a ‘business as usual’ mentality.
“We know the quality of PSG and the job that lies ahead of us,” Cahill added. “It’s going to be like a final, a big one-off game, and we’ll be ready to go out there and give it everything we have to get us into the next round.”
