Sonia Bompastor highlighted the resilience of her Chelsea side after the Blues came from behind to secure a historic victory over Wolfsburg and seal a place in the UEFA Women's Champions League quarter-finals.
Against a side that had never previously lost to English opposition at home, Bompastor's side could have collapsed after going behind to a goal from Alexandra Popp after 16 minutes, but instead we fought back and recorded the win we needed to seal a place in the last eight through goals from Lucy Bronze and Sam Kerr.
'I’m really proud of my players,' said the Blues head coach afterwards. 'We knew this game would be really tough. We know the quality Wolfsburg have in their squad collectively as a team, but also individually.
'The statistic from before the game was that no English club has ever won here before, so we are the first one. It just shows how difficult it is to do. To get the result in this ground shows our resilience, especially as we were losing the game 1-0, and we were able to reverse the situation with our quality and our belief, which is crucial.'
Our triumph in Germany ensured the Blues avoided a two-legged playoff to reach the quarter-finals. Not only does that ease the fixture schedule for Bompastor's side, but she was pleased to have avoided the jeopardy of an all-or-nothing tie.
The league phase saw us record 6-0 wins over St. Polten and Roma, as well as a 4-0 victory over Paris FC, and the Chelsea head coach was satisfied with our performances across the initial stage of the competition.
'It’s so important to avoid the play-offs in a really busy schedule,' said Bompastor. 'But also because when you have to play two more games, first of all, you don't know if you’re going to win them.
'So the good thing is we don’t have to play two more games, but also, we know we are already qualified directly to the quarterfinal. That's what we wanted to achieve coming here.
'If you look back at all the games we played in this campaign, I'm really proud of the results we got. I think we played some really good football in some of the matches. Today we were residents in our own half in the first 45 minutes. But we didn't concede more than one, and we found a way to reverse the situation, then score one more goal than the opposition.'