Maresca sends Blues warning despite ‘perfect night’

Enzo Maresca hailed a “perfect night” for Chelsea after they beat Djurgarden 4-1 in the Conference League semi-final, but had a warning for his players despite their comfortable advantage.

Chelsea are heavy favourites to win European football’s third-tier competition, and took another step towards the final in Wroclaw with an emphatic win in Stockholm.

After absorbing some early pressure, Chelsea took the lead in the 12th minute when Jadon Sancho capitalised on poor defending, collecting Enzo Fernandez’s clever pass and seeing his effort deflected in by Marcus Danielson.

Noni Madueke fired in a well-worked second two minutes before half-time, and Nicolas Jackson then put Chelsea in complete command in the second half.

First, he pounced on a mix-up between Danielson and goalkeeper Jacob Rinne to roll the ball into an empty net, before the Senegal striker made it 4-0 with a sublime strike into the top-right corner from the edge of the area.

Isak Alemayehu pulled one back for Djurgarden with a fine close-range header and, having seen Chelsea win 3-0 in the first leg of the quarter-final away from home only to then lose at Stamford Bridge to Legia Warsaw in the second, Maresca is taking nothing for granted regarding next week’s return leg.

“It was the perfect night. Semi-final, important, and it’s a good result,” Maresca told TNT Sports.

“But we already have the experience from the Warsaw game where we won 3-0 there and then at home we struggled a bit, so we need to be focused on the second leg.

“For one hour, 70 minutes the performance was good, then the last 20 minutes we dropped a little bit. Now we need to finish the job at home.”

In the other semi-final, Real Betis beat Fiorentina 2-1 in Seville. Abde Ezzalzouli and Antony gave Betis command, before Luca Ranieri pulled one back for the Serie A side to give them hope for the second leg in Florence.

Chelsea are also in the thick of a crowded race for Champions League qualification in the Premier League, with champions Liverpool next up for Maresca’s men at Stamford Bridge.

“Now we have a game in three days,” Maresca added. “We’re going to arrive London five o’clock in the morning and we have a game on Sunday so we have to recover the energy.”