Maxwell on Paris-Chelsea and Zlatan Ibrahimović

UEFA.com: The 2-0 UEFA Champions League quarter-final second-leg defeat at Stamford Bridge last year that overturned your 3-1 home win must have been particularly hard to take. Talk us through your memories of those two matches ...

Maxwell: It's a bad memory because I remember the goal, especially the first one which left the team quite lost. That goal we conceded almost at the end of the match left us with very little time to recover. So although it's a bad memory and we had the feeling that we didn't do what we needed to do, it's still a lesson that can serve this year. We hope that the atmosphere at Stamford Bridge will be the same. We hope that it can motivate us to play a better match and with the lessons we learned last year, hopefully this time, we can leave there with a place in the next round.

UEFA.com: So you have the chance for revenge?

Maxwell: There's no feeling of revenge or anything, but both teams know each other a bit better. It's important for us to face a team of that level; it can show that we can continue in this competition, and it will be an interesting tie. It's a match that motivates us to play. Irrespective of what happened last year, it's two great teams with a lot of quality on the pitch. We hope to do a better job than we did to come out on top this time.

UEFA.com: You were in the FC Barcelona squad that won the competition in 2011. It must have been an amazing experience to be part of that group?

Maxwell: It was magical, an incredible moment with such amazing performances that will be hard to repeat. A moment in which the club won a lot of titles including the Champions League. For me it was a lesson in football. Despite having won great titles it was a pleasure for me to have shared them with great people, the group we had at the time. It was a magical moment, a great experience.

UEFA.com: You and Zlatan Ibrahimović have been together at four clubs, starting back at AFC Ajax in the early 2000s. Can you tell us a little bit about your friendship?

Maxwell and his 'brother'©Getty Images

Maxwell: It's one of the difficult sides of football. There are times when you become friends with somebody, then a few years later you go your separate ways to different clubs in different countries. Ibra and I have been lucky enough to play for many different teams, but we have almost always been at the same one.

It started with him as a friend and today he's like a brother to me; the friendship we have began when we were young single guys but today continues with our families and where the family members are also friends. So it's a friendship which will certainly remain after football.

UEFA.com: You are in your third season at Paris. How has the club developed in that time?

Maxwell: Enormously. The evolution has been enormous. The changes [Carlo] Ancelotti and Leonardo made were impressive. The whole training structure, the work structure… the whole physical structure here at the sports centre…

So it has been enormous. The players that started gradually arriving. The dimension the club [has grown to] is very large. And I'm happy to have been part of the start of the project and continuing in it. I hope that the team will continue to grow more and more.