Mourinho content as Chelsea close on qualification

José Mourinho, Chelsea manager
It was good, but of course the first 15 minutes were difficult. We are a team without a lot of maturity, we were quite lucky as they did not score from some good chances. After that we played very well. We were stable, kept possession in a very good way, played against them in a way they do not like to play. Petr [Čech] made a very good save to keep it 1-0. Everyone worked hard, especially the wingers against their full-backs. After that we were always aggressive and tried to accelerate the game. We are almost there.

I told [Samuel Eto'o] to [pressure the goalkeeper]. I know [Timo Hildebrand] from Portugal and Spain. We know Schalke like to play from the back and play from the keeper. [Eto'o] was clever the way he attacked the keeper. My favourite players are those who win matches for me, not the ones who lose them. And Samuel worked with me in the best season of my career. We won everything. So he is in a good position.

We have to understand why we win matches and do not forget why we win. Today we must realise why we won. We must keep calm – there is another important game on Saturday we have to try to win. Willian and [André] Schürrle did fantastic work for us. We have a big squad, we have players with quality. Sometimes players are frustrated when not first choice. The important thing is that when they get the chance they play well, like [César] Azpilicueta today. He played in a position he is not familiar with and did very well.

Jens Keller, Schalke coach
The result is not a disaster for us. We knew we would continue in the hunt for a spot in the next round no matter what happened here tonight. It remains up to us to secure a spot in the second round – nothing has changed in that regard. Nonetheless, we would have liked to pick up a point here. On the other hand we always said Chelsea were the top side in this group and favourites to secure first place.

I want to thank our fans who supported us extremely well once again and their chants towards Timo Hildebrand after his mistake were a classy touch. We had a good start to the game and had three really good chances. We should have put one of them away, because you don't get a lot of chances when playing Chelsea on their ground.

An individual mistake led to Chelsea's lead and that was something we wanted to avoid at all costs, as we knew Chelsea would defend deep from this point onwards. Despite the setback we continued to create chances and Čech made some quality saves. We made another mistake that led to the second goal and a quality side like Chelsea take advantage of these kinds of situations. Furthermore I had to make substitutions due to injuries, as both Julian Draxler and Kevin-Prince Boateng suffered knocks.