Rafael Benítez says Chelsea can win title and hints at José Mourinho

Rafael Benitez believes he is handing over a squad capable of winning the Premier League title to Chelsea's next manager, with the Spaniard once again suggesting strongly that it will be José Mourinho who replaces him in the summer.

Rafa Benitez finally gets respect from Chelsea fans

In the end it was as if exhaustion enveloped them all. Chelsea's victorious players, the majority suited and booted but all with winners' medals draped around their necks, piled on to Titan Airways flight ZT7412 from Schiphol and rather slumped into their seats, basking in the afterglow of success. Petr Cech raised a plastic thimble of a glass of Champagne. Frank Lampard and John Terry, just inside the door, each enjoyed a bottle of beer. All sported weary smiles as the hefty Europa League trophy was passed, row by row, down the plane.

Frank Lampard wants Jose Mourinho to win title with Chelsea

Mourinho’s reappointment at Stamford Bridge should be announced in the first half of June, with Lampard adamant that Chelsea's next challenge is to regain the ruthless consistency that made them the only team to win consecutive Premier League titles against Manchester United.

“Jose’s the greatest manager in our history and he changed the whole belief of the club and made us into a winning club,” Lampard said. “It will lift the fans and it will lift the players. Those who haven’t worked with him before will understand that he’ll give them an extra edge.

“Our Premier League consistency has not been good enough in this last two years. We have to address that. We need to get back to that battering ram, winning mentality we had before. It’s a bit like a magic recipe that’s hard to explain. It’s a lot of mental work. You have to be able to go out even when not at your best and grind out results.”

As ever at Chelsea, the new manager will receive extravagant backing in the transfer market and, with a deal £20million deal for Andre Schurrle already agreed, bids can be expected for Edinson Cavani, Marouane Fellaini and Southampton defender Luke Shaw. Rafael Benítez, the outgoing manager, claimed yesterday that Chelsea would spend £100million on “three or four” new signings. The upheavals at the two Manchester clubs should further enhance Chelsea’s chances.

“We can do better,” Lampard said. “Manchester United and Manchester City have raised the bar but we are all in a different situation this year. It will be difficult [for United]. Who wants to follow Alex Ferguson? We want to jump above United. It’s going to be a huge change for them and whether they can adapt remains to be seen. I believe we have the strength to do it.

“There’s a happy medium somewhere and we must certainly get back to being a bit more dogged. It doesn’t mean taking away the beautiful football but you have to have a balance. It’s a huge priority to be challenging for the league again next season.”

Lampard stressed that he had not been told whether Mourinho would return but hoped that the next manager can finally bring stability to Chelsea. “That would be great – that’s the ideal scenario. We have changed managers and been very successful. No one is going to do 26 years like Fergie but if we can get a bit of ­stability for a while that would help the cause.”

After becoming the club’s record goalscorer on Saturday and ­captaining Chelsea to their Europa League ­triumph against Benfica on Wednesday, agreement on a new one-year contract has added a further gloss to Lampard’s week. His agent had claimed previously that “in no circum­stances” would his client be offered a new deal but talks have been continuing since January. Lampard did, however, explore other options, including the Los Angeles Galaxy.

“There was a time around January when I thought I might have to move on,” Lampard said. “It was funny time for me and the club were looking to move forward. I wasn’t ever fed up with the club. It was a difficult time because of the manager situation. Maybe there wasn’t so much communication and then things get their own legs. When I’ve spoken to the club they have been brilliant.

“There were several other options, routes I could’ve gone down and I had to look at them. My first choice was to stay here. I didn’t come completely close to anything else to the point where there were agreements.

“I’m very settled here with my two kids around the corner. I love living in the area, love the club and have a great relationship with everyone here. Who wouldn’t want to stay here?”

Lampard also spoke with England manager Roy Hodgson about the implications of his next decision. “He was brilliant with me. He said if I was playing at the level required than he’d be happy to pick me. He understood also the difficulties of playing further afield.”

Hodgson admitted that Lampard’s future had been “a worry” but hailed the recent landmark of scoring 203 club goals from midfield. “Frank’s qualities are eternal,” Hodgson said.

“It is an incredible record that will never be equalled. We talked a lot about Sir Alex and not seeing his like again. You could say the same thing about Frank.”

Lampard’s achievements were certainly brought into sharp focus yesterday when 203 balls were laid on the Stamford Bridge pitch in the exact place that he scored each of his goals.

As Lampard inspected the various positions, some vivid memories came flooding back. “It does help it sink in,” he said. “I don’t know how I got that many goals. It’s surreal. The goals are all there in the memory bank.”

Despite turning 35 next month, Lampard is confident that more success lies ahead. “I’ve got belief that I can go on not just for this extra year but further than that.

Trophies get harder to come by. I would love to win the Premier League again. I love goals. I am addicted to the idea of scoring from midfield. You can’t beat the feeling of scoring.”

Rafa's legacy to Mourinho

Fernando Torres playing with a smile

Torres is now simultaneously part of teams who hold the World Cup, European Championship, Champions League and Europa League. He is also playing again with confidence and that was evident in his goal on Wednesday

A first trophy for the new generation

Whereas the Champions League triumph was the result of one last push from the old guard, this was the first major trophy at Chelsea in which the new core has spearheaded the team. Wednesday will inspire them to further success

A decline in player power

A potentially lasting characteristic of the Benitez era has been to successfully introduce rotation and end the old certainty about John Terry and Frank Lampard playing every major match

A lowering of expectation

Benitez has done well, no doubt, but has also delivered a masterclass of lowering expectations. Mourinho will fancy his chances of finishing next season with rather more than a top four finish and the Europa League

A defensively disciplined David Luiz

The man who Gary Neville famously described by as "looking like he was being controlled by a 10-year-old on a PlayStation... has noticeably developed more defensive and positional awareness. It will still be fascinating to see how he would be handled by Mourinho

John Terry:We believe in winning coz we are Chelsea

LONDON — You believe winning has nothing to do with lucky charms, and that losing cannot be blamed on a curse? Me, too.

But how do we explain Chelsea? The London club contradicts conventional thinking with its habit of appearing to be outplayed in European finals but emerging victorious, as it did Wednesday night against Benfica in the Europa League final, just as it did last year against Bayern Munich in the Champions League final.

To be sure, there is a winning gene in Chelsea.

Its owner, Roman Abramovich, mocks the theory that stability in the coaching department is essential to a team’s success. The Russian will soon make his 10th coaching change in 10 years. In those years, he has put 11 trophies in a cabinet that was bare before he bought the club.

Those trophies are not trinkets. Abramovich and his Chelski have won the full set of cups representing every competition open to them.

With each change of team management comes an expensive and inevitable change of personnel on the field. However, the core of the side winning all that silverware remains goalkeeper Petr Cech, defender Ashley Cole and, arguably the pillar of it all, the captain Wednesday night, Frank Lampard.

There has to come a time when Lampard will be phased out of the team. His game is built on industry, on running between defense and attack, and on a desire to score match-winning goals.

But he will turn 35 in June, and Chelsea’s higher management has indicated that there will be no new contract for Lampard after this season. There is a hasty rethinking under way now. It is John Terry, the club’s usual captain, who keeps on missing the big nights through either injury or suspension, and it is Lampard who leads in his stead.

Lampard’s perseverance has now run through more than 800 matches, and he has just eclipsed the all-time record of Bobby Tambling’s 202 goals in a Chelsea shirt.

Tambling played less than half the games, 370, through the 1960s. But scoring was his purpose: He was an out-and-out striker. Lampard is something else, an athlete covering more territory in an era when the sport has speeded up beyond recognition from Tambling’s time.

The financial rewards, too, are incomparable. It will cost Chelsea millions to keep Lampard, but his price will almost certainly be paid now that he has led the team back into the top four in England, and to the Europa League trophy.

He did not score Wednesday, but he struck the crossbar. The goals came from Fernando Torres and, after Benfica had equalized through an Óscar Cardozo penalty, on a header from Chelsea defender Bransilav Ivanovic in the third and final minute of added time.

That winning header summed up Ivanovic, a Serb who never ceases to fight to win a game. It came from a corner, forced by Ramires, a fighter who never ceases to chase. Ivanovic is a big man, but when he leaped off the ground, two defenders — André Almeida and Jardel — were feeble bystanders at his side.

The header looped beyond the reach of the Benfica goalkeeper Artur; the final was won and lost. Chelsea had prevailed through a never-say-die team spirit against an opponent that out-passed them throughout; it was the same story as a year ago in Munich, where the Blues defeated Bayern Munich on penalty kicks.

The Chelsea coach that night, Roberto di Matteo, lasted half a season and was paid off. Chelsea’s next coach, Rafa Benítez, was crassly labeled “interim coach” by Abramovich’s men. Benítez was reviled by the fans, yet he turned a divided team into a winner again.

He will, nevertheless, be gone before this month is out, replaced by Chelsea’s former coach, José Mourinho. Barely a season has gone by when Mourinho has not taunted Benítez, claiming that the latter follows him around Europe, picking up the legacy of teams built by him.

This time, the Spaniard, Benítez, can claim that the shoe is on the other foot. For all the criticism thrown at Benítez, his record in Europe is restored, and it is the Portuguese, Mourinho, who now follows him.

And Benfica? It is a team built largely on South American imports, yet curiously one that suffers from the Portuguese custom of so often producing beautiful, flowing and inventive soccer, but without an end product.

“We are very sad,” Artur said Wednesday. “We showed to the world that Benfica is now ready to start winning.” No, sir. You and your colleagues showed plenty of classy movement and intricate build-up play. But so much of it was lateral passing, and so often the moves petered out through one short pass too many. And so darned often the ball was stolen from Benfica by the hard-working Lampard or his two midfield accomplices, Ramires and David Luiz. Both Brazilian, and both sold to Chelsea by Benfica.

That is one reality of modern soccer. The Lisbon club discovers and imports Latin American talents, but it cannot hold onto the winners among them when predators like Chelsea come shopping.

Abramovich may be a throwback to Gianni Agnelli, once the paymaster at Juventus. Agnelli was probably less impatient, less ruthless in discarding the coaches — but he believed that players are important, managers are expendable.

Or maybe there is another explanation. Wednesday was the seventh European final that Benfica has contested and lost in more than half a century. The seventh loss since Bela Guttmann, the team’s Hungarian coach, walked out in 1962.

Guttmann’s Benfica had beaten Real Madrid to win back-to-back European Cups, but when he was refused a bonus, he quit. “Not in a hundred years from now,” said Guttmann, “will Benfica win another European Cup.” We don’t believe in curses, do we?

Who Says Chelsea doesn't have History: Two European trophies in a row!!

You can knock them down, but as seems to be the case, Chelsea always get back up and return even stronger.

On a dramatic evening in Amsterdam on Wednesday, the Blues lifted the Europa League trophy with a 2-1 victory over Benfica and in so doing, became just the fourth club in history to take a European Grand Slam.

It was a victory that came on the back of a season defined by managerial dismissals, fans protesting and a team failing to live up to its billing at various stages of the campaign.

Yet to their credit, they stuck with it, battled through and Chelsea now join Juventus, Bayern Munich and Ajax—whose stadium ironically staged the Europa League final—in winning the European Cup Winners' Cup, Super Cup, UEFA Cup/Europa League and European Cup/Champions League.

For those claiming Chelsea have little history, surely that stat alone puts the claim to bed once and for all.

It's going to take a mammoth effort for the Blues to ever match Liverpool's 18 league titles, not to mention the 20th Manchester United have claimed this season. But it's not impossible. With the Cup Winners' Cup—a trophy Liverpool never lifted—now laid to rest in UEFA's proud annals, Chelsea can rest safe in the knowledge that their unique record will only ever be matched by a select few.

It's a record the club will rightly be proud of, yet Wednesday's victory holds far more significance. Not only did Rafa Benitez's side complete their unique Grand Slam, they also became the first club ever to hold the Champions League and Europa League trophies simultaneously.

Admittedly, in 10 days time, the Champions League will be handed over to Germany as Borussia Dortmund and Bayern battle it out for European supremacy at Wembley on May 25. Nonetheless, for the next week or so, Chelsea really are the Kings of Europe.

Slipping into the Europa League after a poor showing in the Champions League group stages was billed as a travesty for the Blues. They were reigning European champions and they had just resided over one of the most feeble defences of the title in history.

But lifting Europe's No. 2 crown is a victory that will live long in the club's history. Amsterdam may not reflect the scenes we all saw in Munich, yet in a decade or more, Fernando Torres' wonderful solo effort and Branislav Ivanovic's injury-time winner will be remembered just as fondly.

It seemed history was being made all around on Wednesday, too. Chelsea were competing in their 16th final in 16 years—their 10th since Roman Abramovich took charge in 2003—while Fernando Torres became the first player in history to win the World Cup, European Championship, Champions League and Europa League.

Chelsea fans often like to point out that, while their rivals are busy living off their history, the Blues are very much making it. After Wednesday's success, perhaps they have a point.