Jase

So, the early CL draw pots for next season look like this... POT 1 Chelsea Villarreal Atletico Madrid Man City Bayern Munich Inter Milan Lille Sporting CP POT 2 Real Madrid Barcelona Juventus Man United PSG Liverpool Sevilla Dortmund POT 3 Porto Ajax RB Leipzig Atalanta Zenit POT 3 or 4 Besiktas Dynamo Kiev Club Brugge POT 4 AC Milan Wolfsburg

19 writers took part in predicting the Champions League final on The Athletic and 15 of them went for Man City to win. These 2 predictions in particular took the cake... 🤣

Hope this unexpected but deserved Champions League win will spur the players to improve and do even better next season, especially for those who won their first major trophy with this success - Mendy, Chilwell, James, Mount, Gilmour, Havertz, Pulisic, Werner, Havertz etc. The Premier League title is/should be the next target.

I told myself to not have any expectations for the final but that completely went out of the window once we got the lead. 😆 Anyway, am fucking glad that the season is over and that somehow, we managed to end it on a ridiculous high. In typical Chelsea FC fashion, it was a season of many highs and lows, ups and downs and it was just stressful to watch the team every 3-4 days non-stop. Glad we can all take a breather from that for the next 2 1/2 months! The one party that I feel sorry are the players who have to go play at the Euros. Won't get any break until somewhere in late June or early-mid July. I generally don't care about international football. Just hope the players don't injure themselves, get a good summer break and ready to go again next season.

The 2012 win was totally unexpected, totally against the odds and a roller-coaster ride of emotions from the very beginning. This win is also totally unexpected but it is more impressive and dominant. We went toe-to-toe with some of the strongest teams in the knockout stage and once we reached the final, think we all felt there is a chance that we could win it. Not many fancied our chances but hey, we did it again by upsetting the odds (a little).

Managed to sleep only 3-4 hours and ahead of a really long day!

Kinda funny that Tuchel couldn't win the Champions League with Neymar, Mbappe at PSG but managed to do so with a team that has a penchant for missing chances. 🤣

Our CL record this season: Played: 13 Won: 9 Drawn: 3 Lost: 1 Goals For: 23 Goals Against: 4 (fewest in the tournament)

Kudos to Brentford on the promotion. At least we'll have a new team in the league next season.

Has won 4 Champions League titles now and last night was the first final he's played in. Good for him.

This result also sort of confirms another thing - we do better when we are not the favorites or when people do not expect us to win these major games.

Some BTS celebrations https://www.chelseafc.com/en/videos/v/2021/05/29/champions-league-celebrations--dTBhaXYN

Google has been doing that whenever someone or a team wins a major tournament. It lasts for a day, IIRC.

It's not just that. We are now also a much more well rounded side as opposed to one who is solely reliant on one player like Hazard. On top of that, we played under managers who were/are seemingly out of touch when it comes to competing in Europe. Mourinho's approach was largely just parking the bus and hope an individual did something to win the game while Conte's tactical inflexibility has led to him having a poor record in the Champions League. That being said, Tuchel has made us play in a way that is not too different from what we used to or are seeing see under Mourinho or Conte but he's able to marry this pragmatic approach with more modern tactical tweaks and adjustments.

Tuchel was also pumping up the crowd a lot too.

Achieved 3 things there (although didn't finish in the Top 4 comfortably!) and also something unexpected...being KINGS OF EUROPE again!

Interesting to hear Guardiola break down our approach under Tuchel (before the game) but has now lost 3 times to us. lol

It's obvious but gotta say, having fans back in the stadium - even not at full capacity - is good. The celebration, the joy, the screams when that FT whistle went was so, so refreshing after the past year.

There's actually an 'Overrated Kante' thread over on Redcafe. 🤣 https://www.redcafe.net/threads/unpopular-opinion-the-overrated-ngolo-kante.454671/page-10