Chelsea will be aiming to prove Zinedine Zidane wrong as they continue their Champions League defence against Malmo on Wednesday.
The Blues take on the Swedish champions aiming to get back to winning ways in the competition after their defeat to Juventus in Turin last time.
Chelsea host Malmo at Stamford Bridge as the defending champions and aim to become only the second club in the history of the Champions League to claim consecutive crowns, after Real Madrid secured three trophies in a row between 2016 and 2018.
The man to orchestrate the Spanish giants’ success was former boss Zinedine Zidane, who ended their long wait for La Decima, whilst then claiming a further two successes.
He previously suggested that it was ‘more difficult’ to win the Champions League after coming into the competition as defending winners.
Talking ahead of taking on Sporting Clube de Portugal in 2016, he said: "We're not the big favourites -- there are always many teams who want to win the Champions League.
"We all know that. We are here to fight to win everything -- the coaches, the players, the staff.
"The Champions League is an objective for us, it will not be easy, just the opposite, it is more difficult still to repeat it. When you are the champion, every game is difficult.”
This will of course be a theory that Chelsea will try and disprove as they continue their journey in the competition.
Ironically however, this is also a viewpoint also shared by Blues icon Petr Cech.
Hailing Zidane’s Real Madrid team, he said: “It is really difficult to retain the Champions League because you need an element of everything going right and you need to be lucky as well.
“For Real Madrid to win it three times in a row, that was absolutely exceptional and you have to really take your hat off to a team for doing that because it’s a title that is really so hard to retain.”
