When the final whistle arrived, followed swiftly by consoling applause from the home supporters, Servette’s exhausted players sank onto the Stade de Geneve pitch.
So too did Cole Palmer and Moises Caicedo, among the fresher Chelsea legs as second-half substitutes in Geneva but nonetheless drained by a Europa Conference League play-off second leg that became a crucible for Enzo Maresca’s young team.
Chelsea’s head coach had warned this game would pose particular challenges: not least the playing surface itself, a bobbly patchwork of green and brown ill-suited to precise possession football. “We need to be good and to adapt,” he said in his pre-match press conference on Wednesday. “Otherwise, we’re going to struggle.”
For a chunk of the first half, they did what was expected of them and the costliest poor touch belonged to Servette right-back Keigo Tsunemoto, whose loose attempt to bring down a Renato Veiga high ball allowed Mykhailo Mudryk to sweep in and win a penalty that Christopher Nkunku converted with ease. In every circumstance, a 3-0 aggregate lead should be enough to feel secure.
But that scoreline belied the balance of play in the first leg at Stamford Bridge a week earlier when Servette had registered 13 shot attempts to Chelsea’s nine and missed a gilt-edged chance to score late on. It also ignored the size of the occasion for the Swiss hosts: there were sincere claims ahead of kick-off at Stade de Geneve that this constituted one of the biggest games in the club’s 124-year history.
Roared on by a sellout crowd of 28,000 and a horde of bouncing ultras in the south tribune, Servette were never inclined to give up — and even when they were on top, Chelsea gave them enough encouragement to keep going. Part of that was the pitch but part of it was also the making of Maresca’s second string, his likely Europa Conference League line-up.
Cole Palmer and his Chelsea team-mates breathe a sigh of relief after edging past Servette 3-2 on aggregate (Pier Marco Tacca/Getty Images)
Marc Guiu, an increasingly renowned harasser of opposition goalkeepers, struggled in his physical tussles with Servette’s centre-backs. At times, his link-up play gave Chelsea a platform to build on but on other occasions, his turnovers ignited the home side’s most threatening attacks, including the equaliser lashed in by Jeremy Guillemenot in the 32nd minute.
Guillemenot was fed by Dereck Kutesa, Servette’s best player, who exploited the minimal resistance offered by Enzo Fernandez and inverted left-back Veiga to drive directly at Chelsea’s back line. Much of his other success on the night came on the left flank against Axel Disasi, who continues to look deeply uncomfortable defending against wingers.
Mudryk enjoyed one of his better nights on the left and frequently displayed a more assured touch than the in-form Noni Madueke, who had more trouble than most getting to grips with the surface. Somewhere in the middle of it all was Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, who still appears well short of peak physical condition and toiled ineffectively with and without the ball.
Chelsea’s notions of control evaporated with Guillemenot’s goal and from there, the game descended into a pattern of sloppy visiting attacks and transition sequences that played to Servette’s strengths and amplified the shortcomings of the team Maresca had picked.
Breaking the emergency glass on Palmer, shortly after the bustling Enzo Crivelli had crashed a header beyond a strangely unbalanced Filip Jorgensen in the 72nd minute, felt more like an indictment of the situation than a substitution. Even the sure touch of Chelsea’s talisman failed him when played through by Nkunku late on, the 22-year-old crashing a shot off the crossbar from close range.
Mykhailo Mudryk was one of Chelsea’s better performers in Geneva (Pier Marco Tacca/Getty Images)
Maresca rightly pointed out afterwards that his team had wasted several glorious chances to kill the tension of a frantic final 20 minutes. Chelsea will have more clinical days in the Europa Conference League proper than this but the fact that Servette came within one goal of taking this play-off to extra time, Maresca’s side sneaking through despite a 2-1 loss on the night, highlights two big issues that will occupy the Italian.
Firstly — and remarkably, given just how many professional footballers Chelsea employ — there remain legitimate concerns about the depth of this squad.
Fernandez is too defensively limited to anchor a midfield without Moises Caicedo or Romeo Lavia, whose durability is in question. Next to him against Servette, Veiga again showed that he can sometimes be too eager to commit to a tackle and too easy for wily opponents to beat. In goal, Jorgensen did not strengthen his case to start over Robert Sanchez.
Disasi is not as suited to operating at right-back as Trevoh Chalobah but may need to do so regularly in Europe if injuries continue to plague Reece James and Josh Acheampong is not deemed ready. Dewsbury-Hall is still adapting to a higher level of football and Guiu’s less-flattering moments explain why Chelsea are prepared to take their pursuit of Victor Osimhen down to the transfer deadline.
Mudryk could use the Europa Conference League as a less pressurised stage on which to bring his fragmented skills together. If he does not, Cobham product Tyrique George indicated with a composed cameo in Geneva that he merits a chance to step up. “I think he was good,” Maresca said. “The most important thing is he was not shy. He was (playing) with personality.”
But towards the edges of this Chelsea squad, the question marks outnumber the known quantities. That leads directly to the second issue posed by the Europa Conference League, where every team they could face will regard them much as Servette did: a huge, potentially historic scalp.
Determined to go out of Europe with a bang in the final minutes — or at least a UEFA fine — Servette’s ultras launched a cascade of fireworks into the air over Chelsea’s penalty box from a south tribune that they had transformed into a wall of flares and smoke, stopping play. When the game was over, they serenaded their assembled players as heroes for daring to bloody the noses of such illustrious (or expensive) opponents.
Chelsea’s second string may have to get used to such environments if they want to prove themselves worthy of adding the Europa Conference League to the club’s trophy collection.
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(Top photo: Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)
