Chelsea: Drawing on the Champions League win ahead of Bayern

As Chelsea prepare for their first knockout match against Bayern, the Blues will be drawing on the past to drive them into the future.

Chelsea should have won the Champions League before. A few times arguably. By the time the 2012 final came, it was a Cinderella story run for a team that seemingly had no chance in the world of overcoming Bayern Munich. They did it anyway and won the Champions League they were surely the least likely to win of all.

For the Blues, no player is still at the club in the same capacity nearly eight years later. Bayern Munich has Manuel Neuer, Jerome Boateng, and Thomas Muller. And because it has been a weird (yet successful) eight years for Bayern, all three are all but certain to start against Chelsea again.

The German side will surely be drawing on their experience from that final and probably the season afterwards where they stormed the world in response. Chelsea has their own sources to draw from and they must tap into that knowledge to come out on the right side against Bayern.

Starting closer to the bottom, Ashley Cole and Paulo Ferreira are at the club in coaching capacities. They will have little to no direct effect on the squad going against Bayern, but their advice can be sought out.

But the two standouts have got to be the captain on the day and the man of the match on the day. Frank Lampard is obviously the manager now and he will be in the ear of his players about what that day meant to him, the club, and the fans (many of whom are now the young players in the squad). Petr Cech will be close behind in his advisory role and Lampard will surely be calling him in for any tips.

The Blue family extends far and wide and even Robert Di Matteo is surely not too far away to bring in for a chat. Tactics did not win the day against Bayern Munich. It was instead Di Matteo channeling the right motivations for his players going into the day. The world believed Bayern Munich already had their name on the trophy.

Di Matteo challenged his Chelsea to disagree, and for 120 minutes they did just that. By the time penalties came, Cech had done all the research he needed to give Didier Drogba his chance to complete the miracle in Munich. A miracle to the world maybe, but one may be hard pressed to find a Chelsea player say they did not believe they could do it. Di Matteo channeled that.

Lampard needs to channel all of that as well. This is a different sort of match (two legged versus a final) and the squad on Chelsea’s end is much younger than the veterans on their last hurrah in Munich. Bayern has meanwhile stepped away in part from their academy to build one of the best squads in the world.

The first leg will be tough. The second leg in a few weeks will be even harder. But Chelsea already went to Munich once against the odds. Surely the Blues can welcome the German side to Stamford Bridge and remind them that no odd has been too great for Chelsea.