Elena Sadiku 'so, so proud' of Celtic players despite defeat to Chelsea

Celtic head coach Elena Sadiku has spoken about her pride in the team’s performance despite their 2-1 defeat to Chelsea.

Chelsea were tipped to win comfortably in what was the first Women’s Champions League group stage game to be played at Celtic Park but the hosts were only narrowly beaten.

Murphy Agnew gave Celtic a shock lead in the 33nd minute but Chelsea bounced back with goals from Maika Hamano and Ashley Lawrence.

“Obviously I’m gutted because I think we deserved more,” Sadiku said. “I think we’re the team that is closer to scoring in the last minutes than Chelsea.

“But I’m very, very proud of the girls. What a performance. What an effort.

“They followed through the game plan just exactly as I wanted them to do.

“It’s not only that. I talked about that being confident and being brave before the game and I think if you look at that game then you’ll see players being confident.

“I’m very proud.”

Chelsea boss Sonia Bompastor had fielded a much-changed line-up in a game her side were expected to win handsomely and she admitted she wasn’t thrilled by her team’s showing.

“I knew it would be a tough game for us, especially because of the Celtic mentality,” Bompastor said.

“They showed a lot of heart and they played with a lot of energy. We were expecting that they were going to be really motivated.

“Also, as a manager, I decided to rotate my squad, so sometimes it can happen that the players don’t get the same chemistry together. But I wanted to have a better impression from my team. I’m really happy with the three points and the victory, but not really happy with the performance. We were not efficient enough tonight.

“Every game is always an opportunity to learn. Tonight I learned a lot and I will share that with my players as a team, but also as individuals.

“There are some positives. With our squad, we are still able to rotate players and rest some. We have the three points and the victory, so we stay in the good dynamic for that, but in terms of the performance, we needed to do a better job in different aspects.”