Enzo Maresca\u2019s side were taught a bit of a lesson by Bayern Munich on their return to the Champions League and one Chelsea star in particular will have been pleased to escape the Allianz Arena with a \u201cscrambled\u201d head and the boos continuing to ring in his ears.<\/p>\n
Trevoh Chalobah diverted the ball into his own net early on before Harry Kane scored a penalty having been brought down in the box by Moises Caicedo to give Bayern a two-goal lead midway through the first half.<\/p>\n
Cole Palmer hit back almost immediately with a quite beautiful finish after starting the counter-attack with a run from deep inside his own half.<\/p>\n
Malo Gusto provided the assist for Palmer\u2019s goal but was then at fault for Bayern\u2019s third and Kane\u2019s second after gifting the England captain possession after a poor touch.<\/p>\n
Chelsea weren\u2019t bad in general, but saw their mistakes punished on an evening where the difference between the Conference League and Champions League was made plain, as was the enduring and wonderfully petty hostility aimed at Marc Cucurella<\/a> by the German football fans.<\/p>\n The Spain international has emerged as one of the very best left-backs in the Premier League after an inauspicious start to life at Chelsea but had a torrid time of it up against Michael Olise, who was regularly tying the left-back in knots at the Allianz Arena, if \u2013 as Pat Nevin explained for BBC \u2013 he felt that necessary to \u201cpull the Chelsea defence apart\u201d.<\/p>\n Nevin said in the first half after Olise had already beaten him on a couple occasions: \u201cCucurella got himself in a terrible position there and Olise almost got away. I think his head is getting a little bit scrambled.\u201d<\/p>\n Later on, Nevin added: \u201cOlise is an utter joy to watch. Everything is done at a calm pace. He is completely in control, not just of the ball but of everything around him.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s not even needing to take Cucurella on, he\u2019s just pulling the Chelsea defence apart.\u201d<\/p>\n While we can\u2019t imagine Cucurella is a guy too negatively affected by the animosity of rival fans, actually likely quite used to it as one of the foremost sh*t-stirrers in world football, he was probably quite surprised that the rancour of Germany fans had a) crossed from international football into the club game, and b) persists over a year after an infraction that wasn\u2019t his to punish in any case.<\/p>\n MORE CHELSEA COVERAGE ON F365 It\u2019s not Cucurella\u2019s fault that\u00a0neither of the English officials \u2013 referee Anthony Taylor and VAR Stuart Attwell \u2013 decided to award Germany a penalty in extra-time of their quarter-final defeat to Spain at Euro 2024 after Jamal Musiala\u2019s shot hit his hand in the box.<\/p>\n Cucurella opened up on the boos which continued in the semi-final during the victory over France which saw them through to the final against England, where he was again roundly jeered.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cI realised it for the first time when my name was read out before the game and a lot of people whistled. I thought about it a bit and then realised it was because of the handball situation.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t think much about it, but at the same time I was a bit sad that people came to the game just to boo a single player. Some people wasted their tickets. They could have gone to fans who would have really enjoyed the game.\u201d<\/p>\n We can only delight in just how long this glorious pettiness can last. And the best thing about this is that the Bayern fans who had either forgotten about Cucurella\u2019s perceived slight or had decided to let bygones be bygones, are now right back on the board the booing train. Here\u2019s to a German opponent for Chelsea in the knockouts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Enzo Maresca\u2019s side were taught a bit of a lesson by Bayern Munich on their return to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[219,25822,218,448,296,50,101,56,1955,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-144959","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-chelsea","9":"tag-f365-says","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-front-page","12":"tag-marc-cucurella","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-uncategorized","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\ud83d\udc49 Chelsea \u2018agreement\u2019 offers Jackson non-clause route to permanent Bayern transfer on two conditions<\/a>
\ud83d\udc49\u00a0Champions League prize money table calculated with over \u00a3100m on offer to Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool<\/a>
\ud83d\udc49 Champions League quiz: Can you name all 24 previous winners?<\/a><\/p>\n