{"id":4556,"date":"2025-03-07T00:28:08","date_gmt":"2025-03-07T00:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chelseabluesnews.com\/?p=4556"},"modified":"2025-03-22T02:19:31","modified_gmt":"2025-03-22T02:19:31","slug":"maresca-believes-his-team-deserved-to-beat-copenhagen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chelseabluesnews.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/07\/maresca-believes-his-team-deserved-to-beat-copenhagen\/","title":{"rendered":"Maresca believes his team deserved to beat Copenhagen"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ashton Cox<\/em><\/p>\n

Enzo Maresca said that Chelsea deserved their 2-1 win away at Copenhagen in the first-leg of the UEFA Conference League.<\/p>\n

After a sloppy first-half from both teams that resulted in no shots on target for the Blues, Maresca was forced to bring on several key players.<\/p>\n

Shumaira Mheuka made his Chelsea debut to become the youngest ever starter in a European game for the West Londoners, although he was one of three men hooked at half-time.<\/p>\n

Inspired by the introduction of Enzo Fernandez, Levi Colwill and Christopher Nkunku, Chelsea took control of proceedings to claim their first away win since December 12.<\/p>\n

Maresca said: “Yeah, very important [to win] for many reasons. For sure because it’s away, for sure because it’s a knockout game now so you need that. \u00a0In the first-half, we controlled the game, we didn’t create chances.<\/p>\n

“Overall, we deserved to win the game and it’s good because we gave chances to all of them to get minutes.”<\/p>\n

Reece James started the match from midfield alongside Moises Caicedo, a role he has become somewhat familiar to since his loan spell at Wigan.<\/p>\n

He scored Chelsea’s opening goal, picking the ball up from 25 yards out and finding the bottom-left corner.<\/p>\n

Now, Maresca has confirmed where he sees James fitting in his system in the future.<\/p>\n

He stated: “Tonight, again, he played very good, scored a goal. He can play in many positions because the good players can play in many positions. When I signed with Chelsea, probably the day after, I sent him a video about seeing him as a midfielder.<\/p>\n

“I see Reece as a midfielder, not now – since day one.”<\/p>\n

After being in a seemingly comfortable position, the Blues will be frustrated with how they let another team grow back into the game after falling behind.<\/p>\n

This has been a common occurrence all season, most notably in defeats against Aston Villa, Brighton and Manchester City.<\/p>\n

James noted: “Of course it’s always frustrating to concede so late on in the game. Our goal was to keep a clean sheet, and we didn’t manage that today but we got the win.”<\/p>\n

Chelsea took the lead less than a minute after half-time, with Reece James’ 25-yard strike coming from Marc Cucurella’s cutback on the left wing.<\/p>\n

Enzo doubled the lead in the 65th minute after Cucurella robbed Giorgi Gocholeishvili of possession in Copenhagen’s defensive third, leading to Tyrique George laying the ball on a plate for the Argentinian midfielder.<\/p>\n

However, the Danish outfit grew into the game and finally nicked a goal back from a free-kick, as Marcos Lopez’s delivery towards the back post found an unmarked Gabriel Pereira, who headed in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ashton Cox Enzo Maresca said that Chelsea deserved their 2-1 win away at Copenhagen in the first-leg of the UEFA Conference League. After a sloppy first-half from both teams that resulted in no shots on target for the Blues, Maresca was forced to bring on several key players. Shumaira Mheuka made his Chelsea debut…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chelseabluesnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chelseabluesnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chelseabluesnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chelseabluesnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chelseabluesnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4556"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/chelseabluesnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4602,"href":"https:\/\/chelseabluesnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4556\/revisions\/4602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chelseabluesnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chelseabluesnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chelseabluesnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}