By Daily Sports on May 3, 2019

Maurizio Sarri believes Chelsea deserved to beat Eintracht Frankfurt in the first leg of their Europa League semi-final clash and the Italian wants to win the competition.

The tactician made the bold decision to drop star forward Eden Hazard to the bench as the Blues drew 1-1 away in Frankfurt, with Pedro cancelling out a finish from red-hot striker Luka Jovic.

And Sarri believes that, despite the Belgian's absence from the start, his side's performance merited a victory on the night.

He also insisted that it is irrelevant which team Chelsea face in the final - should they get there - and warned about the strength of their opponents in the second leg, dismissing any notion of an advantage due to their away goal.

“I want to reach the final against any team,

Arsenal or Valencia,” Sarri told reporters after the game.

“It’s exactly the same for me, who we play. I don’t want to play the final. I want to win it. Three months ago, we were in trouble in a very difficult championship and it’s not easy to react, but we were able to react. Now, in the last 15 days of the season, we are fighting for the top four and the final in the Europa League, so we deserve a trophy.

“I think that we made a mistake in the first 20 minutes because my feeling was, from the bench, that we were playing only to manage the result for the 0-0. But we are not able to do that.

“Then we started to play after 25 minutes and played very well until the 85th minute and deserved to win for the number of opportunities. We were in control of the match for 70 minutes and should have won. But they are dangerous on the counter-attack if you give them spaces. We deserved to win.

“1-1 is not so bad away. They are very dangerous at home, but they are really very dangerous away. I’ve seen Eintracht’s games in the Europa League, and they are dangerous.

“We want to go to the final, but we know very well we’ll have to play a very good match next week.”

Sarri has already reached one cup final in his debut season at Stamford Bridge – the

Carabao Cup – but lost out to Manchester City on penalties. (Goal)

•Photo shows Maurizio Sarri

Source Daily Sports

Posted May 3, 2019

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