Chelsea\u2019s centre back Tosin Adarabioyo dismissed suggestions that a lack of Champions League experience explained his side\u2019s loss to Bayern Munich.<\/p>\n
The club\u2019s own website had noted the squad carried just 117 appearances in the competition collectively, while Bayern could claim 860. When those figures were raised after the match, manager Enzo Maresca accepted the gap and offered a measured assessment: \u201cIn terms of experience, there was a huge difference. Even with that, we competed in the right way in this stadium against this team. I came here before with different teams, it is so difficult to come here and compete, you can\u2019t come here and dominate for 90 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tosin, who was making his fourth Champions League appearance, rejected that framing. \u201cAge has got absolutely nothing to do with it,\u201d he argued. \u201cYou saw what we did in the Club World Cup to become world champions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rather than blame experience, Tosin pointed to the quality of the opposition and their recent continental record. \u201cThey\u2019ve achieved great things in their league and throughout the Champions League,\u201d he explained. \u201cIn the past few seasons they\u2019ve reached quarter-finals, semi-finals back-to-back. They\u2019re a very good side.\u201d<\/p>\n
The defender also reiterated Chelsea\u2019s ambition in Europe. \u201cWe have full belief that we\u2019re fully capable to achieve a lot in this competition too,\u201d Tosin added. \u201cWhenever we\u2019re playing, whenever we\u2019re fighting for anything, we go all the way. We always try to fight for the highest and that is winning the Champions League.\u201d<\/p>\n
The exchange underlined a simple divide in post-match interpretation: the manager flagged experience as a factor against a long-established continental side; the player emphasised recent team achievements and belief rather than seniority as the explanation for the result.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tosin Adarabioyo rejects the idea that experience decided Chelsea’s defeat to Bayern Munich. period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2911,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190],"tags":[1047,1046],"class_list":["post-2912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","tag-champions-league","tag-tosin-adarabioyo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}