UEFA Awards: Chelsea leaves its mark on the ceremony
On Thursday, the prestigious awards ceremony hosted by UEFA took place and the winner of the night was undoubtedly Chelsea Football Club. The award ceremony—which is integrated with the annual Champions League group stage draw—is one of the biggest footballing events of the year. Last year, Bayern Munich was the decisive winner of the night, taking home almost all of the awards. However, this time, it was the Blues who reigned supreme.
Chelsea is the reigning European Champion after defeating the likes of Atletico Madrid, Porto, Real Madrid and Manchester City en route to a second UCL title. It was a hard-fought road to glory, but the Blues looked absolutely dominant on the run. Their Premier League season might not have been the greatest—in fact, they only made it to the top four due to a Leicester City bottle job in the last game of the season—but their European success was undeniable.
Chelsea was the undisputed winner of the UEFA awards ceremony, taking home four awards on the night.
In Champions League, Chelsea looked absolutely dominant. The Blues faced some tough opponents—such as the Spanish Champions—and easily swiped them off with a 3-0 aggregate victory. Then came Porto, who had just defeated Juventus. Chelsea won the first leg quite easily however, it lost the second leg, and with Los Blancos up next, no one was sure what to expect. Regardless, the Blues were by far the better side and ended up winning the tie 3-1 on aggregate to move on to the final. The finale was a tough and gritty game played by two sides with everything on the line. City had never won the competition before, but the Blues were also looking for redemption after losing their second FA Cup final in a row. It was a brilliant game, but in the end, Chelsea came out on top after a night of hard defending.
The spoils of that victory were the UCL trophy and four UEFA awards. Before diving into the awards, a quick note on the draw. The Blues were drawn into Group H of this year’s competition. They will square off against the Italian giant, Juventus, Zenit and Malmo. Of course, the former will now be without superstar Cristiano Ronaldo and neither of the other two have the defending European Champions shaking in their boots. Now, it’s time to give some praise—here are the four UEFA award winners from west London.