Thomas Tuchel explains why he substituted Azpilicueta, Pulisic and Werner in Chelsea’s draw with Real Madrid

  Thomas Tuchel has revealed why he substituted Cesar Azpilicueta, Christian Pulisic and Timo Werner in the Champions League semi-final draw with Real Madrid. The Blues played a 1-1 draw with La Liga side as Christian Pulisic opened the score, while Karim Benzema equalized. In the second half, Azpilicueta, Pulisic and Werner were all subbed off as Reece James, Hakim Ziyech and Kai Havertz came on to replace the trio. Asked to sum up the performance, the Chelsea manager told BT Sport: "I think we started the game very, very well and very aggressive with a lot of courage and a lot of quality. "We deserved to win the first half, for me. We had a lot of chances, we had a lot of half chances where we missed precision in the last ball to have more opportunities to score. "Unfortunately, they scored from a set-piece. There was nothing else normally to defend for us, we did not allow any chances so it was a bit of a disappointing result at half-time. "It was important that we stayed calm at half-time, didn’t lose confidence and we fight back into the game. "But today I felt second half was a very tactical game, the speed and the intensity dropped and you could feel that we were a bit tired with only two days in between two away games. "We suffered today from that and if we had one more day to recover it would have been a big chance to keep the intensity up and maybe hurt Madrid in the second half. Like this, it was not possible and we have to live with 1-1." Pressed on whether it was always his plan to ring the changes just past the hour-mark, Tuchel replied: "No, you cannot plan. "But in this moment we lost too many balls, we had too many technical errors. "Azpi looked very tired, Christian looked very tired, same for Timo. "We worked very hard last week so no, we decide from what we see and what is necessary in the game."   source - Metro / Join us on Telegram!/ Follow us on Twitter!

Thiago Silva sends a message ahead of Chelsea’s Champions League second leg game against Real Madrid