Chelsea
A late Marcos Alonso header handed the West London outfit a 1-0 win at Slavia Prague in the first leg of their Europa League quarter-final.
Maurizio Sarri’s lineups have been simply incredible recently. Wish he did this earlier in the season, but better late than never.
— Lav (@LavCFC) April 11, 2019
Team is playing well, and the fans are happy. Good times, just have to keep that going.
Sarri's men were not at their best for most of the match and were fortunate to bag all three points. The Italian, however, chose to look at the positives and hailed his side's commitment and ability to withstand pressure.
"I'm really happy with the result, and also with the performance," Sarri said, as quoted by Sky Sports.
"In this moment we are able to suffer, and in the past we were not able to suffer in the difficult moments of a match.
Maurizio Sarri said we knew it would be difficult tonight. Our opponents are physical, but we were able to face that well and in the second half play better. He adds that the second leg will be difficult too as Slavia are dangerous away. #SLACHE
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) April 11, 2019
"We knew very well to play here is very difficult. The opponents are very physical, very aggressive, so we knew we had to face difficulties during the match. We were able to face them well, then in the second half we were able to play better."
"Now we need to think the second leg will be difficult. These opponents are also very dangerous away, like against Genk [where they won 4-1]. We need to be careful," he concluded.