Chelsea progressed through to the FA Cup finals after punishing Pep Guardiola 1-0 at Wembley on Saturday evening.
Guardiola left some of his stars starting eleven for the FA Cup semifinal tie with Chelsea. The act was criticized as disrespectful of the FA Cup tie. However, Chelsea coach Thomas Tuchel expresses his happiness for his side’s display.
Guardiola made eight alterations for Saturday’s semi-final. Chelsea needed Hakim Ziyech’s second-half strike to book the final spot of the FA Cup. Tuchel acknowledges City’s resilience and praises them as the European highest level.
“If you play against Pep you know that you play against the highest level of Europe because wherever he was at the sideline – Barcelona, Bayern (Munich) and now Man City – for years he was the benchmark with his teams,” Tuchel said.
“And he is again. You can see that with the Premier League,” he added.
“Our target was to close the gap for the 90 minutes because it’s possible in football. And if you arrive in good momentum, we can make this happen,” the German continued.
“I am very, very happy and proud of the performance of our team because we played with a lot of courage. We were very self-confident and played very brave with the ball and against the ball,” Tuchel explains.
He claimed. “We deserved the win, which is most important. We were very active, we did not get passive and we deserved the win against,”
Expressing his joy, “We are very happy with the performance. And it will be a huge boost for our self-confidence and for our progression for our development because we arrived also with a young team and young players.”
“It’s important to have these experiences together and the most important now is to enjoy it today, let the players feel it. From today, it’s the past and we need to perform in a crucial week in the Premier League,” Tuchel concluded.