Chelsea have had some poor results recently, but the manager Maurizio Sarri and his men can go home from Thursday’s visit in Malmö, sweden, with a much-needed succesoplevelse.
The English crew won 2-1 in the first match in the European Leagues 16.-delsfinale in a showdown, where four Danish players were on the grass.
One of them, Anders Christiansen, even came on the measured breeding, but in spite of his reduction to get Malmö FF more than difficult to move on in the tournament.
Christiansen had landsmændene Søren Rieks and Lasse Nielsen in the Malmö team, while Andreas Christensen played the full match in Chelsea’s midterforsvar.
Ross Barkley and Olivier Giroud made sure of Chelsea scores in a match, where the main difference between the two teams was the efficiency in the fields.
Malmö, which was handicapped by the fact that the Swedish league is still holding winter break, provided much along the way, a fine effort, but was not able to get sufficient yield of its good periods.
Barkley opened the scoring after half an hour of play in a situation, where Lasse Nielsen played a somewhat unfortunate role.
The former AaB’s got no ram in Pedros post from the right side. The ball ended up with a completely free Barkley, who got the dotted in behind Johan Dahlin in the target.
One could fear for the reaction from the swedes, but backed by a boisterous hjemmepublikum blew Malmö to attack, and the fight increased in intensity.
After the break got the hosts a few skudchancer, but instead of equalizing, it was the serene guests who scored again.
On a quick counterattack driblede Willian himself free and gave the ball to Giroud, who elegantly tilted it in the net.
the Goal broke a part of the air out of the home, and therefore it was little surprise that Anders Christiansen ten minutes before the time could reduce to 1-2 after a good pass from Markus Rosenberg.
One of the tournament favorites, Napoli, also downloaded a net, when it was 3-1 in Switzerland from Zurich, as had Andreas Maxsø with in the defense.
Daniel Wass was with Valencia, who defeated Celtic 2-0 at the foreign course in Glasgow.
There is a second leg next Thursday.
