Our victory at the MetLife Stadium owed much to a brilliant first-half performance, as we came out of the blocks firing on all cylinders and raced into a three-goal lead before half-time.

Cole Palmer netted an excellent brace with two well-placed finishes before setting up Joao Pedro for our third, but according to Maresca it was the work done right at the start of Sunday’s final which really set us on our way to victory.

‘The idea was to go man-to-man,’ he explained. ‘PSG are so good that if you give them time you are going to struggle. You have to press them very intensely. In the first 10 minutes we were able to do it.

‘In our ideal world we have to do that for 90 minutes but we knew because of the weather it was not possible to do it for a long time. But we tried to be very aggressive and not give them time. Then on the ball we had some very good moments, we exploited the space that we planned, it was very good.

‘I think PSG are a team that you either press them high or you will be in trouble because they have so many talented players, if you give them time to link up and get the ball they are so good.

‘I think we won the game in the first 10 minutes and the message before the game was to make them understand that we are here to win the game. I think the first 10 minutes the team was there. It probably set a little bit the tone of the game. Then again the quality of the players, the game plan, everything was good.’

He outlined further how they had planned before kick-off to go toe-to-toe with Paris in midfield, allowing the Blues to make the most of space out on the wings.

‘They have three midfielders. Two of them were charged for Reece and for Moi, and Vitinha was charged for Enzo. Analysing them we saw that was a good opportunity to exploit that space.

‘We used Cole [Palmer] and Malo [Gusto] on that side to create a little bit of an overload. It was just one game plan, we try to use different game plans. We try to help the players to be in the position where they can give everything.

‘Today it worked quite well but overall it has been the effort from all the team, all the players. I’m very happy especially for them because they deserve this moment.

‘At the end of the day you can give a detailed plan to your players, but they need to execute it and they did that so well.’

- First Europe, now the world! Shop our Club World Cup range now!