Olivier Giroud states that Chelsea are looking to go all the way in the Europa League after ending their group stage campaign with a 2-2 draw away at VIDI.
Having already qualified for the last 32 of the competition going into the game, the Blues wanted to end the group stages on a high with a sixth consecutive victory and while they opened the scoring via Willian’s sublime freekick, the Hungarians battled back with two goals either side of the interval to take the lead before Giroud brought the game back to level with a superb setpiece of his own.
The French forward has now netted four goals in his last three Europa League matches and Giroud, who normally does not take setpieces, expressed his delight at his equalising freekick.
“I’m happy with my free-kick,” said the Frenchman. “I don’t normally have the chance to take them, Willi is in front, but I asked if I could take it and luckily it went in.”
The draw for the first phase of the knockout rounds will be on Monday and with Champions League teams who finished third in their respective groups dropping into the tournament, Giroud thinks the competition will become tighter than ever as it resumes in February, yet the World Cup winner believes that the west London side will be gunning for no less than the trophy.
“The group was, maybe on paper, not so hard, but we normally won the games by one or two goals, so they were always tough games,” added the Chelsea forward.
“Even in this game, MOL Vidi had chances until the end and they scored an amazing goal as well through another French guy, Nego, so we are happy to have won the group but we know we are going to face strong opposition in the future.
“Our target is obviously to win it [the competition], we know we will have strong opposition after the group stage, but that’s the target.”
