Football: Chelsea thrash Juve 4-0 to reach Champions League knockout stage

LONDON (REUTERS) – Chelsea claimed a thumping 4-0 victory over Juventus thanks to goals from home-grown trio Trevoh Chalobah, Reece James and Callum Hudson-Odoi and a fourth by Timo Werner to top Champions League Group H and cruise into the knockout stage.

Defender Chalobah, 22, smacked the ball into the net past the flailing arms of Wojciech Szczesny in the 25th minute after centre back Toni Rudiger set him up from a Hakim Ziyech corner.

A VAR check dismissed calls for handball against Rudiger.

James, 21, showed superb technique to angle a shot into the left hand corner of the goal in the 55th and barely three minutes later 21-year-old Hudson-Odoi scored from a layoff by another Academy graduate Ruben Loftus-Cheek.

Fellow substitute Werner put the icing on the cake before the final whistle by sending the ball home from a Ziyech cross.

European champions Chelsea, beaten 1-0 in Turin in September, made the Italians look ordinary, firing 20 shots to four and earning 12 corners against three for the visitors.

Juventus had already qualified for the knockout stage but the result dropped them to second place in the group, level on 12 points with Chelsea, with one round of fixtures to play.