Tuchel Blasts Team Performance, As Dinamo Zagreb Upsets Chelsea In Champions League Opener.

 On the first night of their Champions League campaign, Chelsea lost shockingly to Croatian league giants Dinamo Zagreb as Mislav Orsic's first-half goal was enough to earn a 1-0 victory at Stadion Maksimir on Tuesday night.

Thomas Tuchel's team was caught off guard in the 13th minute as Orsic outran £70 million signing Wesley Fofana and dinked the ball over Kepa Arrizabalaga after latching onto a pass from striking partner Bruno Petkovic

Chelsea needed an urgent response, but the hosts really managed to hold their own.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, a recent addition for Chelsea made his debut, and came the closest when he attempted to score on his team's opening play but the goal was disallowed.

From Mateo Kovacic's diagonal pass, Ben Chilwell had just barely veered offside, rendering useless his low ball across for Aubameyang's tap-in.

Despite the visitors exhausting all their five substitutes, Chelsea were unable to make anything happen for themselves as they slumped to a 1-0 defeat in Zagreb, beginning their Champions league conquest on a disappointing note.

Chelsea have now conceded at least once in each of their last six games across all competitions, their joint-longest run without a clean sheet since the German took charge in January 2021.

Tuchel who was frustrated on the touchline after losing their third straight away fixtures (Leeds, Southampton, and now Zagreb), said in his post-match press conference.

"I’m angry with myself and I'm angry with our performance," he said. "This is a huge underperformance from all of us. It’s not precise enough, it’s not clinical enough, it’s not aggressive enough. It’s not determined enough and not enough individually and not enough as a team and that’s why we lose this game.

"It’s for me to find the solution and find the reason why. Obviously, they are underperforming individually and I don’t really know where this performance today comes from. A lack of determination, a lack of hunger, and a lack of intensity to actually do the things that we need at the highest level. We are clearly not where we want to be.

"We had good training sessions [ahead of tonight's game],  I don’t understand why it happened today. It’s clearly my job to analyse it so this is my analysing from the sideline and it will continue. We need to be much better. We are not finished, we are not happy with our results, and we are not happy with the way we play in general. But I thought we were on a good way. I’m a bit surprised by this performance today.

"Obviously, I was in the wrong movie as I did not see that coming. I thought that the last game helped us, I thought we showed a reaction in a very difficult moment against West Ham, got the reaction, got the result in the moments when you need a bit of luck in the situation we were in".