Match Report: FA Cup Final Chelsea 2-1 Liverpool
Chelsea emerged victorious in Saturday’s FA Cup final at Wembley, the London side defeated a below-par Liverpool in a largely uninteresting cup final.
Roberto Di Matteo’s Chelsea were left largely unchanged from their 5-1 semi-final victory over Tottenham last month. Branislav Ivanovic teamed up with John Terry in defense with David Luiz and Gary Cahill both missing out through injury. Didier Drogba started instead of an in-form Fernando Torres, who had to make do with the subs bench.
Andy Carroll surprised the nation by starting on the bench for Kenny Dalglish’s Liverpool, Craig Bellamy, Steven Gerrard and Stewart Downing all supported Luis Suarez up front.
Liverpool started the game well, but Ramires gave Chelsea an early lead when he outpaced the Liverpool defense to latch on to a brilliantly placed Juan Mata pass, the youngster then successfully drilled the ball into the back of the net courtesy of a Pepe Reina deflection.
Despite being a goal down, Liverpool responded well and looked very close to equalising when Craig Bellamy ran onto a Stewart Downing pass, only to fire well wide of the target.
Chelsea doubled their lead minutes into the second half when Didier Drogba took a Frank Lampard pass before elegantly driving a chipped effort over Reina in the Liverpool goal and into the back of the net.
Andy Carroll threw Liverpool a lifeline shortly after, the former Newcastle man came off the bench to slide an enormous angled strike past a helpless Petr Cech.
Encouraged by Carroll’s goal, Liverpool pushed forward with tremendous pace.
Carroll appeared to have equalized for Liverpool with minutes left to spare after he rose to meet a Luis Suarez cross, the ball was saved by Cech on the line and the referee deemed play to continue despite huge calls from the Liverpool players.
The dying embers of the game saw Chelsea on the backfoot, despite this, the London side managed to hang on and claim their first (but possibly not last) trophy of this season.
Chelsea visit Bavaria to take on Bayern Munich on home ground in one of the most anticipated Champions League finals in years next week.
