Chelsea midfielder N’Golo Kante has revealed that the Blues do not believe that they are the favourites to go on and win the Europa League despite the tag attached. The West London club made it to the semi-finals of the Europa League after eliminating Slavia Prague in the quarters of the tournament.
Chelsea are edging closer to another cup final as they manage to overcome Slavia Prague in the quarterfinals of the Europa League. The Blues had initially reached the finals of the League Cup back earlier this season but lost out to Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City in a penalty shootout. This time, Maurizio Sarri has the experience of losing and wouldn’t want to taste it once again in quick succession as manager of Chelsea football club. The English side won the first leg at the Sinobo Stadium 1-0 and carried a crucial away goal on their return to Stamford Bridge for the second leg of the tie.
Chelsea started off brightly against their opponents in London and raced into a 3-0 lead in quick time. However, the visitors found some spirit and amounted to a small fightback which gave the Chelsea faithful a bit of a scare even though they prevailed 4-3 on the night and 5-3 on aggregate. Chelsea has now setup a crunch semi-final encounter against Bundesliga side Eintracht Frankfurt. Premier League rivals Arsenal will also face Valencia in the other semi-final and Chelsea midfielder N’Golo Kante has rubbished claims that the Blues are the favourites to win the tournament.
The 28-year-old midfielder won the World Cup with France in the summer of 2018 and knows a thing or two about how to overcome the final hurdle. One key factor in doing so is not to underestimate your opponents and Kante has remained grounded. In a post-match interview after the Slavia Prague game, Kante said, “We are not favorites; we played a good match and we will do all we can to get to the final. But we’re not favorites. It was important for us to win this game. I think it is important to be in the semi-finals, it was our target.”
Kante went on to explain, “We played a good game, it was difficult in the second-half but we got what we wanted and we are happy with that. I think they worked very well, they tried to push more and scored two beautiful goals. After that, we managed to hold on to keeping the win.”
🗓️ SEMI-FINALS 🗓️
Frankfurt v Chelsea
🇩🇪 Thursday 2 May
🏴 Thursday 9 MayArsenal v Valencia
🏴 Thursday 2 May
🇪🇸 Thursday 9 May#UEL pic.twitter.com/OwSEj8wlCl— UEFA Europa League (@EuropaLeague) April 19, 2019
However, Kane did not hide his ambition and also stated that players at the club want to win some sort of silverware this season and the Europa League is certainly their target, “We can make the season beautiful by winning the Europa League. That is the only title we can win now, so it would be great to win the Europa League. I think at the beginning of the game it was a good feeling to score three goals like this. The most important thing was to qualify. We will go into the semi-final with confidence and we hope to qualify for the final.”
