Ahead of their Champions League round of 16 game English football club, Chelsea's midfielder Eden Hazard has revealed that his side fear Paris Saint-Germain (PSG).
"We have to acknowledge that PSG are a team to be feared this season. They win all their games and have some great players in all positions. They are on par with Barcelona and Real Madrid at the moment," Hazard was quoted as saying by goal.com on Monday.
"Teams go to Parc des Princes knowing that they could be in for a thrashing. Could that happen to Chelsea as well? Anything can happen."
Don’t write off Chelsea yet
"But we still have some great individual players and are very talented. Don't write us off just yet. Go ahead and say PSG are the favourites," he said.
PSG eliminated the defending English Premier League champions last season and Hazard said they haven't forgotten the disappointment.
"Everybody at Chelsea thought 'no, not PSG, not them again!' after the draw," he said.
"We still have the memory of last season's tie. We had everything in our own hands to progress, we were playing at Stamford Bridge, PSG were down to 10 players. But we crashed out after conceding twice from a corner, normally one of our strengths."
Hazard picked Marco Verratti as PSG's key player ahead of Tuesday's first leg and said that he is also wary of the threat that forwards Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Angel Di Maria pose.
"Verratti is their main man for me. He is in control and is their engine. Whenever they are having a bad game, he can take them by the hand and unlock the situation," he said.
"I saw that Verratti will probably start from the bench and that is perhaps good news for us. But as a football lover, I would like to see him play."
"And there is obviously Zlatan who is scoring a lot of goals."
"Di Maria is enjoying a great season as well. He went through a bad experience at Manchester United and people had forgotten about him a bit. But he has become one of the best players in the world again at PSG," he concluded.
