As I really hope everyone who's managed to find this Chelsea blog knows, the Blues beat Benfica 1-0 in the first leg of their UEFA Champions League quarterfinal - in Lisbon. This came, by the way, after Benfica had spent the entire buildup to the match talking about how much they wanted to play Chelsea when the draw came up and how much the club was looking forward to taking our collective scalp.
And then they were pretty well outplayed by the Blues and lost. Whoops. You'd think anyone with any sort of dignity would shut up and focus on their own team after that, right? Well, you'd be wrong.
Here's coach Jorge Jesus on the first leg:
We were superior in many things to Chelsea, but they were luckier in one moment. We had more opportunities. We didn't deserve to lose tonight. We were the better side for long periods, had more shots on goal and Chelsea didn't see much sight of our goal. But what counts is the result.
And now captain Luisao in the buildup to the second:
The game in Lisbon left a sour taste in the mouth because Chelsea did not deserve to win and it proved that the team who plays better does not always win. I do not know if the Chelsea coach reserved players in the first leg, but the truth is that we were the better team and 1-0 was a misleading result after what we saw on the field of play.
I recognise that I'm at least slightly biased here but nothing about the Benfica match meshes with either Jorge Jesus or Luisao's comments. Yes, the home side had more possession and more shots, but they were fairly useless possessions and shots, and Chelsea had (by quite a lot) more chances to score than Benfica did. Unsurprisingly, this meant that they scored more goals, and I was slightly disappointed that the final score was only 1-0 to the Blues.
I don't really get why Benfica feel the need to denigrate Chelsea so badly for this one. I certainly don't feel the same about their team (although I am adding 'really goddamn sore losers' to my mental description of them). Could we lose to them at the Bridge? Sure! They're a good side and if they get an early goal tomorrow we could be in for a bad bad evening. If worst comes to worst, though, I hope we can maintain some sort of respect for our opponents rather than throwing this nonsense around.
And yes, it's weird for a Blues fan to complain about a team failing to lose with dignity. But at least when Chelsea get all whiny about getting knocked out of the CL, they have something to actually whine about.