Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel has healed praise on English duo of Mason Mount and Ben Chilwell who got their first Champions League goals to put Chelsea in the commanding seat against Porto.
Mason Mount scored a brilliant first half goal after a clean turn off Nigeria’s Zaidu Sanusi and Chilwell rounded the goalkeeper later on to make it two, a goal that was characteristic of a forward player.
“Mason and Ben did very well to get their goals, which were important goals for the team,” Tuchel said after the match. Mason played a very good game, he linked up well with Reece down the right side and his goal was a very crisp and clinical strike. He deserved that because he played a good game.
“I was really pleased with Chilly for applying pressure and forcing the error which gave him the opportunity to score. He pushed on, finished well and scored a big away goal for us. He showed a lot of composure because it was not easy to score so late.”
Struggling German duo Kai Havertz and Timo Werner put in another performance to forget and were subbed off earlier in the second half for Christian Pulisic and Olivier Giroud. Tuchel admitted they were hauled off due to their performances.
“I wanted to give the sign that I accepted it was a bit of a tough match for Timo and Kai today,” he said. “They had not their best days and the connection between the deep seven players that we needed for the build-up and the front three was a bit lost.
“The balls we delivered were not the best and I felt they did not play on their highest level so I wanted to have an impact from the bench because Christian [Pulisic] is in a good momentum and Oli [Giroud] waited for long and has good memories of the stadium [He scored four goals in the match against Sevilla in the group stage.]
Thomas Tuchel’s unbeaten run as Chelsea boss came to an end in an embarrassing 5-2 home loss to relegation battlers West Brom at the weekend and Tuchel is pleased with his team’s response.
“The result is excellent for us,” said Tuchel. “It was important to bounce back from the last match. We’ve had some excellent results together but we needed to show that we can improve from the defeat to West Brom. I was really pleased with the performance and also with the clean sheet from the guys, which is very important.”
Chelsea will travel across London on Saturday to play Crystal Palace before they will be a ‘neutral host’ at the Ramon Sanchez-Pizjuan Stadium next week for the second leg.