So, finally, Chelsea has to taste the bitterness of being the first title holder to be ousted in the first round of Champions League. Despite investing millions of dollars on high profile players, and even after sacking a well-known admired soccer coach, The Blues could not survive as the Champions. Just seventh month ago, this was the same team which celebrated its Champions League triumph in most astonishing way, and now the same team is being ogled by the world for their miserable preference in the league. However, the good point of their exist is their 6-1 victory over FC Nordsjaelland which is the first for its new manager Rafa Benitez who was managing his fourth match after ex-manager’s sudden sacking.
Other two group teams’ clash put Chelsea on the fourth place in group E, which means, it is out of the league now and will move to Europa League. So, the next competition for English cash rich club would be Europa League which would again be a tough task for it, however, its newly appointed manager is quite confident of his side’s win, he said, “We think it is an important competition. We want to go as far as we can. If we can win the competition, that is what we will try to do. The Europa League is not important when you can’t win it. When you are in the semi-final or final everybody wants to win it. Every competition is important to us and we will try to win it if we can.”
Hence, when Juventus griped the first group position after beating Shakhtar in Donetsk, they have actually thrown Chelsea out of its much likely league tournament. Facts wise, this is the first time in last ten seasons where Chelsea has to leave the tournament right in the group stages. Many are arguing that Europa League is like a low level league wherein Chelsea would never be interested playing with its A-Team, but on the contrary, Benitez has ruled out these rumors and said, his team would play in there seriously and try to win the league as any other league in the world. He said, “I’m sure that, playing at this level, we can do whatever we want. But we have to show that in the next game. One game at a time. if you remember the games we’ve already played, we performed more or less against Manchester City, we could have beaten Fulham, the first half against West Ham. Everything I have seen from the players is positive. They are progressing. They are improving. So I have to be pleased.”