0-1 Fernando Torres 5′ // 1-1 Marcano 51′ // 1-2 Moses 55′ // 2-2 Karadeniz 62′ // 3-2 Natcho (pen) 75′
Benitez praises squad as Chelsea progress to Europa League semis

Rafael Benitez praised his players after his side advanced 5-4 on aggregate on Thursday (11th April) to the Europa League semi-finals, despite a 3-2 quarter-final second-leg loss to Rubin Kazan in Moscow.

SOUNDBITE: (English) Rafael Benitez, Chelsea interim coach
“If you put things in context, you come here, a synthetic pitch, (Ryan) Bertrand couldn’t come so we had to play Paulo (Ferreira), who was not playing for a while and by the way he did a great job. We have another game on Sunday, another semi-final, so to score two goals and be ahead, really pleased. Disappointed because we didn’t defend well in the second half. But still we go through. So again I will say, really pleased with the team effort, with a lot of players giving everything on the pitch.

SOUNDBITE: (English) Rafael Benitez, Chelsea interim coach
“Again I would say you have to analyse the two games in context. We have a good result coming here, (we had) a different environment and different things to manage and I think we did well. So it’s a pity we lost the game but we go through that’s the main thing. Especially using players like Paulo (Ferreira) and Ake that were not playing before, giving a chance for different players. We are managing the squad, hopefully we have fresh legs for Sunday too.”