Champions League return could be transformative for Chelsea and Enzo Maresca | OneFootball

Blues provide concrete proof they are heading in right direction for first time in years

By midway through the second-half here at the City Ground, it would have taken not just one act of god to deny Chelsea a Champions League return, but several.

Still, off came the entire Chelsea front-three, each replaced by a more defensive team-mate with designs on seeing the game out. Into stoppage time, Enzo Maresca refused to cease his touchline barking, even with final whistles blown elsewhere. The Italian was taking no chances and nothing for granted - and really, you could understand why.

Are Chelsea back? That has been the season’s volatile contention and in truth they are not there just yet. But for the first time in a good few years, there is concrete proof of travel in the right direction.

This was supposed to be the game that did the heavy-lifting on a dull Premier League final day, but in truth it lacked much drama, impacted by surprising scorelines elsewhere and a Chelsea performance that kept Forest at arm’s length once Colwill had struck on 50 minutes. The City Ground was revved up but their team out of gas, summed up by Chris Wood missing glaring chances in both halves, the kind he was gobbling up a few months ago.

Todd Boehly celebrated with the Chelsea players on the pitch

Mike Egerton/PA Wire

Sure, there is not much romance in Chelsea snapping up this spot at the expense of one of the year’s surprise success stories. Indeed, for a season in which the status quo was for so long shaken up - one that at various points had not only Forest but Bournemouth, Fulham and Brighton dreaming of Champions League football - the end result feels a little plain.

The top four teams in England comprise the traditional Big Six, minus the two of their number that produced historically poor campaigns - and one of those will still be in the Champions League anyway. By virtue of the Premier League’s power, state-owned Newcastle will be there, too, despite losing at home to Everton on the final day.

But none of that is Chelsea’s fault and this squad, however expensively assembled, is still the youngest in the Premier League. Maresca conceded on the eve of this match that his players were under greater pressure than Forest’s and that for some this would be the biggest match of their lives.

This is not the Chelsea of old, blessed with a serial-winning spine of Terry, Lampard and Drogba, and this particular iteration is, however repetitive Maresca’s refrain has become, ahead of schedule, at least compared to where most of us expected them to be when this season began.

They had won just once in 10 away league matches before coming here, and that in the closest of the lot to home, at Fulham last month. In a red-hot atmosphere, could you really trust them to get the job done?

But get it done they did, just as they had against Manchester United last Friday night when not playing well, and just as they had against a hungover Liverpool and stubborn Everton before that. Since Christmas, it has seldom been spectacular, but when their season’s ambition slipped from a premature title challenge into a top-five race around the turn of the year, they were resilient enough to make sure the slide halted there.

Chelsea showed their resilient side to deliver at the City Ground

Chelsea FC via Getty Images

For the home side, this was an odd blend of an occasion. On one hand, it was a celebration of the prize already won, a banner at one end reading “Destination: Europe”, as if the precise resort mattered not for a club that had been to the third tier and back since last playing any continental football at all.

And yet clearly, there was something more on the line, a shot at returning to the Europe’s top competition for the first time since 1980, when they had qualified for it as defending champions.

For Chelsea, by contrast, only the Champions League would really do, not least because Wednesday night’s Conference League final against Real Betis would offer an emergency route into the Europa League anyway, if required.

That final in Wroclaw now could be a crowning glory of sorts, the chance to put a first major trophy - however novel - on Maresca’s CV and ensure this is back to being the only English club to have “won it all”.

Oddly, it might just be easier for Chelsea to embrace Europe’s third-tier trophy without irony now, knowing they will be back where, really, they ought to be next term.