(Video): Cole Palmer’s superb turn and cold finish give Blues lead in quarter final | OneFootball

Chelsea have the lead in the Club World Cup quarter final!

If you’ve stayed up late to watch, you’ve already been rewarded with a great goal. Reece James stepped into space in midfield after the Blues pulled apart the Palmeiras structure, and he picked out Cole Palmer who was demanding the ball on the edge of the box.

The attacking midfielder knew exactly what he wanted to do, and he executed it perfectly. He let the ball come to him, drawing in defenders, then turned and took a touch towards goal.

A Palmeiras player dived in – a huge mistake against Palmer. He nipped the ball ahead of the lunging defender and then just had to roll the ball in. It was a teasingly slow and soft finish, absolutely straight out of the Palmer manual. We absolutely loved it, and we got the classic chilly celebration too. It’s been too long since we saw that! That’s Palmer’s first goal from open play since January against Bournemouth. Let’s hope it’s the start of a real return to form.

You can see the goal in the clips embedded here:

[Footage from DAZN]

Chelsea look confident after strong start

Cole Palmer does his classic celebration against Palmeiras.

This is of course a perfect start for the Blues, and they’ve followed the goal with more chances. It’s 4 attempts on goal after 20 minutes now. Let’s put another away and we can start thinking about the semi final.

With Moises Caicedo out suspended and Romeo Lavia out injured, we did fear this could be a tough game to get a foothold in, but so far we look confident and our opposition don’t look up to the levels we saw from Flamengo in the group stage. In fact the enforced changes to their back line look to have really hurt them.