Mourinho lauds Chelsea 'resistance'

Chelsea FC manager José Mourinho felt his side were deserving of their last-gasp 2-1 win against Valencia CF which came by virtue of a 90th-minute goal from Michael Essien. The Ghana midfielder struck after Andriy Shevchenko had cancelled out Fernando Morientes's first-half opener, but Mourinho could only pay tribute to the character of a team that "resisted, resisted, resisted" before scoring late on to reach the UEFA Champions League semi-finals.

José Mourinho, Chelsea manager
During the break we were out of the competition but in the second half we were very dominant, dominant, dominant and beat a great team in a tough stadium. On top of that, we were losing at half-time. We deserved to win over the 90 minutes but we were ready for extra time and I had my changes prepared. This season we've had problems with 50 per cent of our players and today we resisted, resisted, resisted. I think any Chelsea supporter has to be proud and even any English fan, as we have three English teams in the semi-finals. Revenge isn't a word for me - not in my life and even less in football. We're at a disadvantage against Liverpool [FC] in the semi-finals because we're still in three competitions.

Quique Sánchez Flores, Valencia coach
Before the game it was my duty to give the impression that we were the stronger side in order to conceal the problems we had, because the reality was that we had just 14 players available due to injuries. It was hard to lose like this but then we're not among the greatest European clubs. This defeat serves to regain our European prestige and let people know that we’re back. Now we have to concentrate on the league because that's all we have left.