Chelsea defender Cesar Azpilicueta has admitted that he still has full confidence in his teammate Ross Barkley despite the Englishman’s late penalty miss in Chelsea’s 1-0 Champions League defeat to Valencia.
Valencia took the lead through Rodrigo Moreno’s goal and the score looked set to be equalized when the referee awarded Frank Lampard’s side a penalty following a VAR check on Daniel Wass’ handball.
Ross Barkley had only been on the pitch for seven minutes after coming un as a substitute but stepped up for the spot-kick, taking rank over his team-mates Jorginho, Willian and Olivier Giroud in West London on Tuesday.
Willian and Jorginho, in particular, were in conversation with Barkley before he took the penalty, which clipped the crossbar on its way over in the Group H opening fixture.
However, Chelsea captain Azpilicueta insisted his team-mates were simply encouraging Barkley, not debating over who should take responsibility. The Spanish defender said that the English midfielder is one of the best penalty takers in the team and the supporting cast was proving the 25-year-old further confidence, “Ross is one of the best penalty takers in the team, he’s one of the players that take them, He had the confidence to shoot, he has taken a few penalties which he has scored. We had more players with great capabilities from penalties but he had good confidence to shoot, he was unlucky to hit the bar and obviously he is disappointed to not get the goal to at least get a point. They were encouraging [him] to have the confidence to score, he had high expectation and high confidence to score, so we tried to give him the best conditions because we knew it would be decisive, sometimes it happens. We are lucky we have a lot of penalty takers.”
