Focus pays off for professional Chelsea

• Chelsea conclude Group G with a win that leaves Sporting third
• Nemanja Matić says, "We just did our job"
• José Mourinho: "The competition starts now"
• Paulo Oliveira says Sporting will focus on UEFA Europa League 
• Round of 16 draw takes place in Nyon at 12.00CET on 15 December

Nemanja Matić, Chelsea midfielder
We played very well, like a team. We knew beforehand that we were already first in the group but we wanted to play a good game, to make our fans happy, to go into the next game in the league with confidence. So we are very happy with tonight.

[The manager] said that it doesn't matter that we are first – we have to respect football because it's about winning. We knew it too and we just did our job. When you wear a Chelsea shirt you have a big responsibility and you always have to be 100%.

Of course, Chelsea are always one of the favourites but we have many games. We will see. There are many good teams in the Champions League, big teams, so step by step we'll see if we can do it.

I said before, [Sporting] have a great team. They tried, always, to play to the end and they tried to get one more goal but we have more quality in our team and this was the deciding factor.

André Schürrle, Chelsea forward 
We wanted to start really well and keep the pressure high, so with the penalty it was good for us and the second goal too. In the first half we could have scored more goals because we had the ball so often in transitions and so many chances. It was a good game from us.

We knew Sporting would fight for everything because they had to [get a point] to qualify, and that's what they did. But when you saw us in the beginning you knew what we were doing and what we had to do keep it calm. We did that well. We were defensively compact and in attack we had a lot of chances.

José Mourinho, Chelsea manager
It was a good attitude. The players were serious, the ones who were not playing a lot got a chance. The ones who are playing regularly also faced the game in the right way and we did what we had to do and deserved to win.

Chelsea were the stronger side, we played very seriously. We kept four or five regulars and the players that don't always play like Schürrle, Čech and Luís all came in very well. I can't speak about Sporting because the substitutes for Chelsea would probably be starting for Sporting or any other side. When the game was 2-1, maybe they could bring some emotion to the game, but at 3-1 the game was finished, the better side won. If Sporting were supposed to get more points within the group, it was definitely not at Stamford Bridge.

Ruben Loftus-Cheek makes an impression©AFP/Getty Images

I don't think any of the big teams are out of the Champions League, maybe Liverpool, but all the teams that want to win the competition are all still in. Season after season you repeat this. I used to say that the real Champions League starts now. Barcelona are there, Real Madrid are there, Bayern are there, Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea, Dortmund, Paris, everyone is there, so the season starts now.

What can we do? I don't know. For sure we were not one of the top four teams last year and we played in the Champions League semi-finals. Let's see what we can do this season, step by step.

Paulo Oliveira, Sporting defender 
[It's a disappointment] without a doubt. We played against all the other teams as equals. In the games we showed our quality. Unfortunately we didn't manage to achieve our main objective – to qualify – but now we have the Europa League, which we're going to try and win.

We're a young squad, with some fundamentals still to learn, and we've got a way to go, but this makes up part of our growth as players.

Marco Silva, Sporting coach
We tried our best but we know the reality of the team we are facing, coming to play here at Stamford Bridge against rivals like Chelsea. Things didn't go the way we had planned or expected. We couldn't manage them in the first half, we didn't have the rhythm. We allowed them to have possession very close to our goal. In the second half we came out better and got a goal but all our aspirations were killed when they got the third goal.

The objective is always to go step by step. We always want to win so obviously we are not happy with the defeat. We were expecting more but we have to carry on. We have a very big game on Sunday; unfortunately we couldn't get the point we needed here.

You can't come to a place like this and think about other games. This was the game tonight, we were thinking of this, not the Europa League. Unfortunately we couldn't stay in the Champions League so now we will concentrate on the Europa League.