Chelsea's Petr Cech admits club have a 'Champions League obsession'

Posted Monday, September 26, 2011 by theguardian.com

• Goalkeeper says all Europe's top clubs have same desire
• Cech picks out Valencia as Chelsea's main Group E rivals

Chelsea's Petr Cech admits club have a 'Champions League obsession'
Petr Cech says Chelsea's Champions League Group E match at Valencia will be 'a difficult one'.

Petr Cech has admitted that Chelsea are "obsessed" with the Champions League, but in a positive way, because any ambitious team would want to win club football's most prestigious trophy.

After starting this season's challenge by beating Bayer Leverkusen 2-0, Chelsea play at Valencia on Wednesday in what may well be their hardest match of the group stage, with Genk the other team involved.

Chelsea lost the 2008 final to Manchester United in a shoot-out and Cech, asked if the club are obsessed with the one major trophy they have yet to win, said: "Show me a team of the stature of Chelsea, Manchester United, Real Madrid or Barcelona who is not obsessed with winning the Champions League.

"If they are not, I'd be surprised why they play in it. Even if you have won it before, you just want to keep winning the Champions League. Every season the ambition is to win the competition.

"People always use the word 'obsession' in a negative way, which I'm always amazed by. We are not obsessed in the way that if we don't win it we'll just go and shoot ourselves. That's not the case. We are obsessed with the Champions League because this is a great competition to win. In a positive way we try to search for the victory. I think it's very good to have this obsession because if you are not hungry to win, you shouldn't play."

Cech stated that the challenge André Villas-Boas's side face at the Mestalla on Wednesday will not be easy. "Going away to Leverkusen will be a tough game but everyone is counting Valencia as one of our main rivals and this will be a difficult one," he said. "When you are going for every trophy, it's always good to have as many points as possible as early as possible in the Champions League, and then you can concentrate on the league and the Carling Cup. Our aim is to get qualification as quickly as we can so we can concentrate on the Premier League until the New Year."

Juan Mata joined Chelsea from Valencia in a £23.5m deal during the summer and has been a success, scoring two goals already including one against Leverkusen, while also adding flair to the side. And Cech joked that the club have a link with all of their opponents in this season's group stage.

"We have our assistant coach going to Valencia [as a scout] and he will give the information the boss wants," he said. "Our group is very interesting because we bought a goalkeeper from Genk [Thibaud Courtois], we bought a player from Valencia and we sent [Michael] Ballack [back] to Leverkusen. It's a funny kind of draw."