Two minutes into the second half at Athens Olympic Stadium, a chasm suddenly opened in the middle of Chelsea ’s defence and Panathinaikos winger Facundo Pellistri , a Uruguayan international on the books at Manchester United until last summer, charged purposefully into an ocean of space and directly towards Filip Jorgensen ’s goal. Advertisement In a truly competitive football match this scenario would constitute real jeopardy — particularly with Chelsea only 1-0 up at the time — but the mood of the moment was something closer to mild intrigue, and it was gone in seconds. The recovering Benoit Badiashile and Renato Veiga forced Pellistri to check his run before he reached the Chelsea penalty area and he sloppily gave the ball away as he tried to offload it to a teammate.
Within two minutes Chelsea worked the ball forward unimpeded to the right flank, where Pedro Neto easily beat his man and floated a cross to the back post. Mykhailo Mudryk arrived and headed it into an empty net, doubling the visitors’ lead and ending any pretence of this Europa Conference League game as a contest with more than 40 minutes left to play. To say Chelsea cruised to victory against Panathinaikos would be a severe understatement.
Joao Felix did whatever he wanted, Mudryk had his best game for the club and Christopher Nkunku maintained his impressive goals-per-minute ratio with a nerveless penalty despite rarely having to break into a sprint. The hardest working person in Athens Olympic S.
