English premier League – West Ham 0-1 Chelsea
Coach Mourinho reacts post-game:
‘West Ham was not the best game to play after a final.’
‘A final is more than a game because of the tension, pressure and emotions. Normally you play a price and West Ham is the best team at playing the way they play, no doubt about it. To cope with it and adapt the way we did defensively is something really difficult to do.
‘We had chances to kill the game and we were expecting good situations to attack the space and score more goals, but we didn’t and when you don’t do that against West Ham you are in permanent danger.
‘It doesn’t matter the quality of the game when the emotion and the temp is so high, and the players were so fantastic in their commitment and positive aggression, and the referee was good at letting the game follow the normal direction.’
In every title race you have different matches to play. There are matches when you need your quality to win, others when you need luck and others when you have to adapt to the opponent and we had to do that with Terry, Cahill and Zouma for the direct football, and Courtois amazing in everything.
‘The midfield were trying to keep the ball and release attacking players to kill the game but in the end we had periods when we had to defend with everything. It was a game when you can easily lose two points so I am happy.
‘Today was not a game of quality but during the season what kept us top is the quality of our football. Now and again we can’t keep that for different reasons and in the last two or three months we lost Diego Costa for three matches to suspension, we lost Fabregas to injury, lost Matic to suspension too. Sometimes we lose a little but what brought us to this position is our quality and we won with quality because the goal we scored is fantastic football.’
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