Chelsea officials were shocked by FC Porto’s demeanour during the quarter-final tie on Tuesday.
Portuguese reports suggested that it was all incited by Thomas Tuchel telling Sergio Conceicao to “f*** off”.
Cezar Azpilicueta hailed his sides fighting spirit. The Blues did concede late into the fixture off of a brilliant back-kick from Mehdi Taremi. Tuchel did clash with his opposite number after the final whistle. Antonio Rudiger and Edouard Mendy was seen involved in altercations with Porto players. Even Pepe had to be separated from the Chelsea staff.
“We knew that Porto are a tough team,” said the Blues captain after the game. “They knocked out Juventus, they play with a lot of intensity, and we knew that we had to suffer, even though we had a very good result from the first leg.
“Despite the score at the end I think we controlled the game and we were a bit unlucky in the last few metres where we could maybe create more chances.
“Porto have very good attacking players, they are used to dominating games in their league, they create a lot of goals with different attacking options, they have people on the bench. So they are a very good team.
“We know that Porto every time make the games very difficult for their opponents. They don’t let you play, they are very aggressive, so you have to fight.
“The team showed that spirit and when you want to get through it doesn’t matter how. Of course, we are very honest and we know that we can play better, but sometimes it’s the game to dig in, to fight together, and the team showed that spirit in the two games.”
He added: “The team showed a great spirit, we fought really hard, the attacking players ran a lot. The team defended brilliantly, everybody. The attacking players, they did an amazing job, when we recovered the ball they kept the ball.
“Porto made a lot of fouls so we couldn’t get them in the transition, because they stopped us a lot when we were accelerating to get into the counter-attack. So I think the team worked very well and I’m very happy with the fighting spirit from everybody.”
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