Chelsea vs Djurgarden

Chelsea and Djurgarden are set to trade tackles at Stamford Bridge in the return leg of their UEFA Conference League semi-final tie.

Brimming with confidence following an all-important 3-1 win against newly-crowned Premier League champions Liverpool, Chelsea will be out to get the job done after an emphatic 4-1 victory in the first leg in Stockholm. Those triumphs extended the Blues’ winning streak to four matches in all competitions as they seem to have hit the ground running down the final stretch. Though Enzo Maresca’s charges don’t need to make it five wins on the spin to progress into the grand final, they head into proceedings as odds-on favorites, having won their last three home meetings with Swedish opposition via a combined score of 8-0! Nonetheless, Chelsea’s progression is nearly a foregone conclusion, considering they’ve advanced from all 16 previous two-legged European ties when winning the first leg on the road.

On the other hand, Djurgarden flopped in their first-ever encounter against English opponents, and it’s hard to expect them to make things right in West London. Unable to recover from a dismal first-leg loss, the Swedes could only manage a 1-1 draw against domestic rivals AIK at the weekend to make it only one victory from their last four matches across all competitions (D2, L1). Djurgarden’s chances of progression are as slim as it gets, but they can draw heart from dispatching Rapid Vienna in the quarter-finals despite losing the first leg at home. An unlikely win in England’s capital would see Djurgarden become the first team in Swedish football history to pull off 11 victories in a single European campaign.