Chelsea's Diego Costa was difficult to contain, admits Maxwell as PSG send Blues out

Vaishali Bhardwaj10 March 2016

EXCLUSIVE

Paris Saint-Germain defender Maxwell admits he found it tough trying to contain Diego Costa in the Champions League on Wednesday night, but praised his teammates for managing to halt the Chelsea striker at Stamford Bridge.

Costa overcame a minor tendon injury to start Chelsea's last-16 second-leg game with PSG, and went on to haul the Blues back into the contest with his well-taken goal 11 minutes after Adrien Rabiot had handed the Ligue 1 side the lead in the first half.

The goal was Costa's 11th in 15 appearances in all competitions this season, but Zlatan Ibrahimovic's second-half strike ensured PSG booked their place in the Champions League quarter finals with a 4-2 aggregate victory over Chelsea.

And Maxwell said the quality of the French side's defenders helped them thwart the Chelsea attack to reach the last eight for the third successive year.

When asked how tough it is playing against Costa, Maxwell told Standard Sport: "It's very hard. He opens the space and creates a lot of aggressive things for Chelsea and he's not easy to handle on the field.

"It's very difficult to play against players like this. But we have good defenders and he scored one goal but we defended very well against him and the other Chelsea players."

Chelsea have now been eliminated from the Champions League by PSG for two consecutive years after last year's away goals defeat to Laurent Blanc's men.

Speaking about whether PSG had come into the match against Chelsea with a specific game plan, Maxwell replied: "Of course we had a game plan. Nowadays in football, everybody studies everyone and we did what we had to do.

In Pictures: Chelsea vs PSG

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"That was to keep possession and create the spaces out in front and create chances. We have great strikers who can score any time so we are very happy with the performance tonight.

"They [Chelsea] are always dangerous with the players they have. They are tough in defence and have speed and technical quality so it wasn't easy.

"We learned a lot from last year and this year we showed a better performance. We are very happy with the victory."

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