Fernando Torres: Forget The Europa League, We Want The Champions League

Chelsea’s Fernando Torres has admitted that their Champions League opening game defeat to Basel was a much-needed wake-up call after the Blues recorded a 3-0 victory over Schalke 04.

A 2-1 reverse in Switzerland then was followed by a 4-0 win against Steaua Bucharest and now a convincing win against the Bundesliga outfit, leaving Chelsea at the top of Group E with six points.

Torres claims that the Basel defeat was a necessary shock to the system, and says the squad learned from their mistakes against the Swiss champions.


“These kind of things are good when it happens at the beginning of the season, when the games are not crucial and we have time to fix it, like we have done now,” Torres told reporters.

“When these kind of things happen at the end of the season, you lose competitions, you lose titles and it’s not good. Hopefully we’ve learnt the lesson and it won’t happen again.”

The Spaniard was also adamant that a repeat of last season’s Champions League campaign, where they dropped into the Europa League, will not happen again.

“The Champions League is what Chelsea has to play; Europa League is not a competition we want to win,” Torres added. ”We’re in the Champions League now, we don’t want to be involved in the Europa League again because we want to win the Champions League.”