Sarri satisfied with Chelsea approach, Lucescu focused on BATE
Maurizio Sarri praised Chelsea after the emphatic win over PAOK in the UEFA Europa League, however opposing manager Razvan Lucescu has turned his thoughts to playing BATE in the crucial encounter.
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It was always going to be an uphill battle against English giants Chelsea in London, but when Ukrainian centre-back Yevhen Khacheridi was sent off after just seven minutes, PAOK’s chances of registering points were blown to smithereens. Completely outclassed, a PAOK team devoid of belief was 0:2 down by half time thanks to Olivier Giroud, before Callum Hudson-Odoi and Alvaro Morata increased the lead to four in the second stanza.
Chelsea boss Maurizio Sarri shared his thoughts on the comfortable win: ”First of all, we approached the match well, and I’m very happy about this,” stated Sarri. “In these last three games, we had problems when trying to make an impact. To be honest, it was difficult finding real motivation for this match after BATE Borisov defeated Vidi, however I am very happy with the performance.
Will Callum Hudson-Odoi begin playing in the domestic championship? If he was ready to make the difference for a big team like Chelsea in the English Premier League at 18, he would be the best player in Europe in two years! PAOK were down to 10 men after seven minutes so he was given plenty of opportunities in attack. Alvaro Morata? His attitude is not a problem for me or the players, he’s doing excellently in training.
Could any of PAOK’s players compete in the Premier League? I’ve only seen a couple of their matches, so it’s difficult to say. However, I do like the PAOK number 10, Dimitris Pelkas.”
Razvan Lucescu brushed off the defeat, instead choosing to focus on the upcoming match against BATE Borisov at the Toumba Stadium: “This game doesn’t have any bearing on the possibility of qualifying, this will be decided in two weeks,” said the Romanian manager. “Our psychology will not be affected by this match. Before the game started, we knew that the result wouldn’t affect our situation at all, and the final for us will take place against BATE Borisov after two Super League matches. It’s normal for everyone to be disappointed, but when we had a player sent off after seven minutes, our task became very tough. We could have lost by more goals.
We played Pontus Wernbloom in defence because I wanted to protect Fernando Varela for future matches. Will Chelsea help PAOK in the sixth match? They have international players and I’m sure they will play against Vidi with motivation.”
PAOK substitute Amr Warda, who was lively after being introduced in the second half, noted the difficulty of playing with 10 men: “Today, we played against one of the world’s strongest teams, and we were down to only 10 players for practically the entire game. This made our task very tough indeed. When I came on, I tried to change the pace, however we ended up conceding two more goals.”
Goalkeeper Alexandros Paschalakis is looking ahead to the decisive match with Belarusian outfit BATE in December: “In this group, we have one more chance to qualify, and I hope we can take advantage of it. The early sending off put our backs up against the wall, however this cannot be used as an excuse. Chelsea have high level players, but even taking that into account, we had travelled here to win and not just to take a draw. We’re a family and we will recover from this loss.”
Vieirinha also felt that the red card played a key role in the loss, however he wants PAOK to leave London with their heads held high: “The fans travelled miles to see us here, it turned out to be a bad day, however I’m sure they can understand we were playing against a top level side,” mentioned the 32-year old. “The red card didn’t help us at all. From then on, we played without the ball, and it became really difficult for us. Nevertheless, we showed our football, and we should all leave with our heads held high.”
