Real Madrid 2-0 Chelsea (Benzema 21’, Asensio 74’ | Chilwell sent off 59’)
SANTIAGO BERNABEU – For the Chelsea fans who had flooded Plaza Mayor and spent the day signing Frank Lampard’s name, whether he could really pull off a miracle in Madrid was immaterial. The gulf between them and the bona fide super-clubs is now so great that they do not know when they will next be able to enjoy a trip like this – but it turned into a sobering reality check as Lampard’s system backfired and Chelsea took a 2-0 deficit into the second leg.
A back three with Ben Chilwell and Reece James as wing-backs had suggested they would be happy to sit tight. The goals came regardless, James was constantly overrun by Vinicius Jr, and having offered nowhere near enough going forward, Ben Chilwell was sent off for a needless foul on Rodrygo.
The banner unfurled by Madridistas before kick-off warned that “history continues” and indeed there was a sense of the past repeating itself as Karim Benzema opened the scoring with his fifth goal against Chelsea in 12 months.
It was one of the easiest goals of his Champions League career that set them on their way. This is how they get you, those perennial European champions. You can watch some of their most brilliant passing sequences come to nothing, and that’s when Dani Carvajal emerges to lob the ball to Vinicius Jr. It ends up scrambled across goal to Benzema, who gives another showing of why Kalidou Koulibaly describes him as the best striker in the world.
Real operated without mercy, hauling James out of position, with Wesley Fofana on a booking. With that backdrop, Vinicius could not be stopped. It was as if he was waiting for someone to intercept him, body him, anything, before teeing up Marco Asensio’s clean strike from the edge of the box for Real’s second.
Chelsea’s best-laid plans were in as much of a state as the building works outside the stadium. At least the Bernabeu’s massive structural overhaul has an end date.
It remains a huge concern that Chelsea’s main reason to be optimistic right now will see his contract expire at the end of the season. N’Golo Kante is a Benjamin Button midfielder, never ageing as his sprightly runs through the middle created Joao Felix and Raheem Sterling’s best openings. Father Time will catch up with him eventually but with a new contract still under negotiation, that is one signing Todd Boehly could be confident in making.
It might all have gone so differently. Kante’s through ball inside three minutes found Felix; but then you could feel the confidence wobble as Eder Militao surged back and Thibaut Courtois made himself big enough. Felix, after all, never once scored or registered an assist against Real during his three-and-a-half years in La Liga.
Even if the system ultimately didn’t work, Lampard cannot take all of the blame. Yet he did squander a chance to demo his in-game management. Curiously, he had declared before kick-off that he would introduce Kai Havertz, not only revealing his hand but also leaving himself no room to consider the circumstances. He tried switching Koulibaly for Marc Cucurella – Carlo Ancelotti immediately spotted the latter as a weak point and his wingers went in for the kill.
“Chelsea DNA”, and “getting the club” were never going to be enough against the 14-time kings of the continent – though again, not all of this is Lampard’s fault. Ancelotti pointed out this week that he has coached over 1,200 professional games; his former midfielder has not even acquired a sixth of that experience, and almost a third of his resume was written in the Championship. Even Ancelotti admitted that he was “sad” to see Chelsea in their current situation.
Boehly, meanwhile, appeared in a brief interview before the game with all the blind faith of those children who appear on YouTube channels, stating their team is about to win 3-0. It would not matter, ordinarily, for Boehly to betray his naivety with that claim – but with the whole season resting on this tie, he inadvertently made Chelsea look every bit more the underdog.
Real Madrid are far from perfect. There were moments of sloppiness and just like against Liverpool, it is probably generous to assume that at all points, they were deliberately luring their opponents into a false sense of security before striking back. Last weekend’s defeat to Villarreal culminated in an alleged punch-up involving Federico Valverde in the car park – they can do chaos too.
But some of the best bits about them are their youngsters, a model Chelsea could quite easily have followed without spending £500m – in fact they did in Lampard’s first reign, but only because they were under transfer embargo.
Now he’s back, Chelsea have been handed another reminder of just how far behind Europe’s elite they have fallen.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/5pYJzWe
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