Thomas Tuchel
Chelsea head coach Thomas Tuchel said there was ‘no harm done’ after the Blues’ Antonio Rudiger grabbed Junior Firpo and Diego Llorente at the final whistle.
After the final whistle Rudiger then appeared to grab Firpo, before being pulled away by Llorente, who was shoved and grabbed by Rudiger, before the referee stepped in and Rudiger was chaperoned away by his teammates. Speaking of the melee,
Thomas Tuchel said: “I did not see in detail what was going on. I can understand the frustration because we all have been in this kind of situation when you think you have a point or have equalised and then it slips away even later and you get angry and frustrated. We all know this because it is a team of athletes and a team of people who sacrifice to win and hate to lose like we do and it gets heated up. I hope there were no bad things. If you have Toni, you have Toni. You cannot have Toni being the emotional leader and aggressive leader on the pitch and then suddenly not be involved if there are some teammates to protect or involved in an argument. It is one-hundred percent Toni and hopefully how I observed it there was no harm done and in a frame that you can accept. I hope so because I didn’t see it in an intense game like this.”
When Leeds boss Marcelo Bielsa was also asked about the flare-up.
Marcelo Bielsa said: “In a game with emotions that were so high, with liberating passions. At the end, this was excessive. I saw it within the margin of what is tolerable and it was justified. I insist all of us hoped it would not happen. I did not think we overcame grave limits.”
