Maresca admits Chelsea did not give enough respect to Legia Warsaw in shock defeat | OneFootball

Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca admits his side did not pay Legia Warsaw enough respect in their shock defeat to the Polish side.

The Blues made it through to the Conference League semi-finals despite being beaten 2-1 at Stamford Bridge, following their 3-0 first-leg win.

Marc Cucurella had equalised for his side after Tomas Pekhart’s early penalty but Steve Kapuadi struck to hand Warsaw an unexpected win.

After the game, Chelsea star Reece James claims his side did not respect the game enough and Maresca admitted he agreed with those comments.

Maresca said: “Probably not (disrespecting) the competition, but probably the other team tonight, because I think we respect the competition all season, probably tonight, as I said, because of the first result, 0-3, so you can manage in the wrong way the result, so for sure Reece is right.”

The Blues boss named a surprisingly strong team which included Cole Palmer and Nicolas Jackson.

Both are enduring a difficult run in front of goal at the moment which continued against Warsaw and Maresca admits their form is hurting his side.

“Yeah no, especially the ones that we are missing, unfortunately they are very easy goals, because again I think tonight in the first five minutes we had two chances, but it can happen,” he said.

“Hopefully very soon Nico and Cole can start to score goals because they are very important for us.

“In this moment the one that is scoring more goals for us is Cucu, and that means a good thing because he’s not the one that has to score goals.

“Nico has been more than two months out, so the idea to play with him is to continue to build a little bit the physical condition for him, so the idea was for him 45 minutes, we planned already that, and for Cole, he had a small problem before the international break, so again, for him it was to use him 45 minutes, one hour, and then just to give them a little bit tempo and improve that and be better Sunday on the game.”