Maresca sends blues warning despite the ‘perfect night’

Enzo Maresca praised a “perfect night” for Chelsea after beating Djurgarden 4-1 at the semifinal of the Conference League, but had a warning for his players despite his comfortable advantage.

Chelsea is a great favorite to win the third level competition of European football, and took another step towards the final in Wroclaw with an emphatic victory in Stockholm.

After absorbing early pressure, Chelsea took the lead in the 12th minute when Jadon Sancho capitalized the poor defense, collecting the intelligent pass from Enzo Fernández and seeing his effort deviated by Marcus Danielson.

Noni Madueke shot in a second well worked two minutes before part time, and Nicolas Jackson then put Chelsea in complete command in the second half.

First, he pounced in a confusion between Danielson and goalkeeper Jacob Rinne to roll the ball in an empty network, before the Senegal striker put the 4-0 with a sublime blow in the upper right corner from the edge of the area.

Isak Alemayehu withdrew one back to Djurgarden with a good header at a short distance and, after seeing Chelsea win 3-0 in the first quarterfinal game of the house just to lose in Stamford Bridge to Legia Warsaw in the second, Maresca is not taking anything for what he gave his leg back next week.

“It was the perfect night. Semifinal, important, and it is a good result,” Maresca told TNT Sports.

“But we already have the experience of the Warsaw game where we won 3-0 there and then at home we fight a little, so we must focus on the second leg.”

“For an hour, 70 minutes the performance was good, then the last 20 minutes that fell a little. Now we need to finish the work at home.”

In the other semifinal, Real Betis beat Fiorentina 2-1 in Seville. Abde Ezzalzouli and Antony gave Betis command, before Luca Ranieri retired one for the side of series A to give them hope for the second leg in Florence.

Chelsea is also in the heart of a race full of people for the classification of the Champions League in the Premier League, with the Liverpool champions below for Maresca’s men in Stamford Bridge.

“Now we have a game in three days,” Maresca added. “We are going to get to London five in the morning and we have a game on Sunday, so we have to recover energy.”