Salzburg pays dearly for their home defeat against Chelsea
In the fifth Champions League game, the time had come: Red Bull Salzburg had to admit defeat for the first time in the premier class and missed out on collecting important points in the fight for promotion to the round of 16 in the 2-1 defeat against Chelsea. This was mainly due to two completely different halves.
Matthias Jaissle saw two very different halves of his team.
GEPA images
Also in the second duel against the Chelsea FC proved Red Bull Salzburgthat it can probably keep up with the European top class. In the 2-1 defeat against the ball-strong Londoners, you finally had to admit defeat for the first time in the fifth group game of this year’s Champions League season at the end of a ripped-off opponent. “Of course it’s a shame that a series like this is over. But we have to admit without envy that we played against a strong opponent. The quality has always presented us with problems and that’s just difficult to defend. I’m proud of them The second half in particular showed that with courage we can pose problems for such opponents,” said head coach Matthias Jaissle at the press conference after the game.
CL Group Stage – Matchday 5
If you had even more game shares at the beginning of the game, you received a damper after the early goal by Kovacic (23rd) and were clearly brought out of the table fifth in the English Premier League. “The first goal we conceded gave us a blow,” admits offensive player Noah Okafor in the “mixed zone” after the game. “We eased off a bit after that, but you could tell the incredible quality with which they let the ball run.”
Bold performance in the second half
Chelsea had visibly gained self-confidence after the opening goal, controlled the game as much as possible and only a little later would have made it 2-0. Salzburg seemed nervous, were too unimaginative with the last pass and too hasty in the end, so they couldn’t really test guest keeper Kepa once in the first half. “I wouldn’t rate the first half as bad in its entirety. It was good until we conceded. We won the ball early on, but didn’t manage to maintain that courage and aggressiveness throughout the half,” said Jaissle. The fact that after the first 45 minutes the team from Mozart’s town went into the break with a 0:1 deficit can possibly be described as lucky. In addition, you were allowed to show yourself to keeper Philipp Köhn, who put on an extremely strong performance. “He showed a world-class performance. Big compliment, that’s not to be taken for granted,” praised the head coach.
Head coach Matthias Jaissle must have made that clear to his team during the break, because the hosts looked like they had changed after the restart and rewarded themselves for a strong early phase with Junior Adamu’s equalizer. “We knew we had to put pressure on Chelsea. We managed that much better in the second half,” says Luka Sucic and believes that you can definitely build on the performance against the Londoners: “We’re young players, definitely out of it and then it will be better in the future.”
With six points, after AC Milan’s clear 4-0 away win over Dinamo Zagreb, they are now third in the table and now have a real final in front of them in the clear group game in Italy (2 November, 9 p.m.). For the Austrian league leaders, it is not only about a possible entry into the round of 16, but also about the European overwintering. “Playing a final like this in San Siro in front of a full house is awesome,” says Sucic, and head coach Jaissle is also looking forward to the showdown in Italy: “It’s going to be an all-or-nothing game and we want to be there too put our match plan in place. Then we’ll see what comes of it. Everyone knows that Milan have a world-class team. We’ll see what we can take from there.”