Chelsea aim higher after Conference League triumph / Photo: Wojtek RADWANSKI - AFP
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Chelsea aim higher after Conference League triumph
The UEFA Conference League was not where Chelsea wanted to be, but their triumph in Wroclaw could prove to be a turning point for a club that had lost their trophy-winning habit.
The Premier League team beat Real Betis 4-1 on Wednesday, recovering strongly from being outplayed in the first half by their Spanish opponents.
Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca's second-half substitutions lifted his team but an inspired Cole Palmer was the catalyst for victory, producing two pinpoint crosses for Enzo Fernandez and Nicolas Jackson.
Jadon Sancho's fine finish made it 3-1 and Moises Caicedo added a fourth in stoppage time to give Chelsea their first silverware since Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital acquired the club in May 2022 from Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.
During the past three years the owners have spent more than £1 billion ($1.3 billion) on promising young talent, but until now have had little to show for it.
Chelsea had been clear favourites to win Europe's third-tier club competition from the start, enabling Maresca to field youth and fringe players.
They rampaged through the group phase, outclassing teams with a fraction of their resources such as Noah, Astana and Shamrock Rovers.
Maresca spoke on the eve of the final in Poland about how he had stressed the importance of the Conference League to his players.
He will not need to persuade them next season as they are back where they feel they belong, the Champions League, following a fourth-place finish in the Premier League.
- 'Winning mentality' -
Maresca, in his first season at Stamford Bridge, said he hoped winning the Conference League would be a launchpad for bigger and better.
"Hopefully, it can be a starting point to build a winning mentality," he said. "You need to win games. You need to win competitions.
"And for sure, the trophy we won tonight is going to make us better. But also, I'm very proud about the path or the journey we have done in the Premier League.
"For me, it's the most difficult competition in the world. You have to be consistent in 38 games. And these players, they showed it."
Maresca had a rollercoaster first season after replacing Mauricio Pochettino.
His team were within touching distance of eventual Premier League champions Liverpool in mid-December before stumbling badly.
But they found an extra gear towards the end of the campaign, negotiating a tricky run-in to finish in the Champions League spots.
"For sure, we have improved a lot since we started," said former Leicester boss Maresca. "We also start to win games in an ugly way.
"That is something with a young squad that you struggle to do that."
The Italian has been keen to highlight the extreme youth of his expensively assembled squad.
The average age of his starting side was the youngest in a single Premier League campaign.
Under Abramovich, Chelsea became serial trophy winners, claiming five Premier League titles and winning the Champions League twice.
It is too early to predict whether they will return to those heady heights but the Conference League is a start.
Next on the agenda is a trip to the Club World Cup in the United States, for which Chelsea qualified by winning the 2021 Champions League.
"Now we have 10 days off, 10 days where we need to recover energy, and then we're going to start the Club World Cup," said Maresca.
"The target is to go game by game, try to go step by step, but at this moment we don't have any target for the Club World Cup.
"Now the only target is to recover energy, because the season has been very long."
A.Malhotra--MT
