Chelsea will become only the fourth club after Juventus, Ajax and Bayern Munich to win all of UEFA’s top competitions if they beat Benfica in the Europa League final in Amsterdam.
The Blues were victorious in the Cup Winners’ Cup in both 1970/71 and 1997/98, and beat Bayern Munich in their own backyard to claim their first Champions League crown last season. The West London club will also become the fourth English side to win UEFA’s second club cup after Liverpool, Tottenham and Ipswich claimed the title under the older formats of the competition.
Chelsea have a lot to contend with compared to their opponents as Eden Hazard, John Terry and Oriol Romeu are injured, whilst Demba Ba is ineligible and John Obi Mikel and Ryan Bertrand are doubtful. Whereas Benfica have only the suspension of Maxi Pereira to contend with.
However, the Portuguese side will be hurting after succumbing to their first defeat in the league season at the weekend against bitter rivals Porto, who have now gone to the top of the division following Kelvin’s injury time winner and need only better Benfica’s result on the final day to claim the title. I imagine that has been agony for them and their fans, hopefully we can compound their misery.
Both David Luiz and Ramires will be looking forward to coming up against their former employers and will hope that we are victorious against them as we were during the quarter-finals of last season’s Champions League, but Jorge Jesus’ side should be a tougher prospect this time around and have plenty of players that can hurt Chelsea, like Oscar Cardozo, Nicolas Gaitan and former Blue Nemanja Matic.
If you fancy putting a bet on this one then it’s worth noting that Chelsea have scored at least 2 goals in their last five Europa League matches and over 2.5 goals in total were scored in all five. I’m going to be an optimist and go for a 2-1 win to the Chels.
