Willian says Chelsea’s win in Madrid proves they can knockout Barcelona in Champions League second leg

1/105
Simon Johnson21 February 2018

Willian believes Chelsea are good enough to knock Barcelona out of the Champions League at the Camp Nou because they won at Atletico Madrid this season.

Chelsea had to settle for a 1-1 draw in the first leg of their last-16 tie after Willian’s second-half strike was cancelled out by Lionel Messi.

Barcelona have not lost at the Camp Nou in the Champions League since 2013 - a run lasting 24 games. The Blues could always go through on away goals or penalties, yet that is still a tough task.

Willian, however, insists Chelsea are not daunted by the challenge facing them next month after achieving the rare feat of beating Atletico Madrid in the group stage away from home back in September.

In Pictures | Atletico Madrid vs Chelsea | 27/09/2017

1/32

Chelsea’s 2-1 victory is still regarded as their best performance of the campaign and when asked if they need to match it in the return leg at Barcelona, Willian said: “Yes, of course. We can go there and do a great job again.

“It will be a completely different game, to play there is different. But if we go with the same mentality as we did against Atletico, we can go with great spirit and win the game.

“Of course winning at Atletico gives us confidence. We want to play in big games like this one. It’s really important. We must prepare well.”

Defender Marcos Alonso also believes the Atletico display will give the players the self-belief they need to repeat the feat against the Liga leaders.

He added: “Atletico is a fine example of a good performance from us this season. We will have to take all the positives things from the first leg and put an extra shift in Barcelona.

“It will be even more difficult but we can do it. We will fight for it until the end. We will definitely not fear it.

“Drawing the first leg is disappointing. We did a perfect game apart from a mistake for their goal.”

Andreas Christensen was responsible for the equaliser when his sloppy pass across the penalty area was intercepted by Andres Iniesta and he passed to an unmarked Messi to level the scores.

It was Messi’s first goal against Chelsea in nine attempts and was the only chance he had throughout the 90 minutes.

Alonso has backed Christensen, who has impressed at centre-half all season, to recover from the disappointment.

“Andreas is okay,” he said. “It was a mistake but it can happen to anyone.

Slip up | Christensen's (left) only slip up all night gifted Messi his goal  (Getty Images)
Getty Images,

“Will he bounce back from this? Yes, definitely. He has had a very good season so far. We will have a tough 90 minutes to play in Barcelona but Chelsea will give them problems.”

Barcelona striker Luis Suarez is convinced Messi’s strike has swung the balance of the tie their way.

Chelsea surrendered possession for long periods, with Barcelona having 68 per cent of the ball, to hit them on the counter attack.

Suarez claims Chelsea will have to change their defensive tactics now they need an away goal in Spain.

He said: “It was a beneficial goal for the second leg. Now they have to try to score at the Camp Nou and we’ll have more space.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in