Dressing room admission shows Maresca’s Champions League comments were wrong | OneFootball

When Enzo Maresca was insisting earlier this season that he had only been told he needed to make it into the Champions League after his second year in charge, and that this season would would be a success even if his team finished outside the top 5, we didn’t believe him.

“I didn’t say our target was top four. The club never told me the target was top four,” the Blues coach said back in February.

“When I signed here, the target was in two years playing in the Champions League, not in one year. This is why I have said many times we are above my expectation,” the former Leicester coach explained.

Champions League was always the target says Colwill

Levi Colwill speaks to Chelsea TV at full time.

And now we have it from inside the dressing room – yesterday’s match winner Levi Colwill has come out and said that making it into Europe’s top competition was what the squad wanted from the first minute of this season:

“As a club we’re back where we belong,” Colwill in an interview on the club’s official website.

“It’s all we’ve wanted from minute one of the season, that’s what we’ve planned to do. Chelsea should always be in the Champions League, for the size of the club and the fans it’s meant to be there, and that’s what we’ve worked towards and that’s why we’ve done it.”

Colwill on his academy training paying off in the big moments

It was particularly special to have such a crucial role in our season (and in a small way, in the club’s history) played by an academy player, and Colwill also spoke a little about how his Cobham training helped him:

“What I got taught in the Academy is to fight. You have to fight to be the best and that’s what me and the team have been doing, the back four and the whole team to try and get these clean sheets to win.”