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Napoli performance amazes Mazzarri

"This team keeps on surprising me," said SSC Napoli coach Walter Mazzarri after the competition debutants assumed a position of strength in their last-16 tie against Chelsea FC.

Napoli performance amazes Mazzarri
Napoli performance amazes Mazzarri ©UEFA.com

Walter Mazzarri, Napoli coach
We could have scored a fourth goal but we were unlucky with the [Christian] Maggio shot in the final minutes. It's a pity because we would have been calmer with a three-goal lead. Chelsea are very strong at home so we need another great performance there.

Tonight we struggled only for about ten minutes after conceding a goal courtesy of an unlucky bounce which fooled [Paolo] Cannavaro. This team keeps on surprising me. After starting well we did fantastically to react after conceding like that. It's normal to not always be at 100% but we have never failed in the big games this season.

We are fully aware that we are not in the quarter-finals yet. Even today we saw that Chelsea have great players who can easily score two goals at home. I'm happy we have already experienced playing in England in the group stage against Manchester City. At least we know more or less what to expect in London.

André Villas-Boas, Chelsea manager
After our goal we had chances to go 2-0 up, we missed a few opportunities, and we should have prevented a couple of mistakes, because with Napoli's attacking strength you'll get punished. The third goal was perfectly avoidable.

Taking a one-goal deficit home would have been better. Two goals is more difficult to recover but not impossible, of course, because of the amount of chances we get and the environment we must create to turn the tie around.

We'll analyse closely what we did wrong because there's a couple of things we have to do better. If we had gone 2-0 up it would have been a different story. It's a case of efficiency and Napoli had it. The statistics are very similar – both teams created a lot in a game which was open and end to end.

Napoli scored the third goal during our best period and that left us a little bit down, but we had a couple of chances thereafter, mainly near the end through Didier [Drogba]. We have 90 minutes ahead of us and there's big possibility that, with this away goal, we can turn the tie around.

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