Real Madrid-Chelsea Benzema is worth what Chelsea

Everything was what it seemed. Chelsea, a bone. Madrid, Benzema and ten more. The Champions, a bad place to screw up. Makkelie, a referee at the service of himself and not of the one who put him in Valdebebas. And the tie, a thriller to be resolved in London. The great virtue of Madrid in this competition that he founded and that explains his thirteen cups lies both in his ability to take advantage of the tailwind as well as to overcome storms. One came over him in the first half and he came out of it alive. And then he restored a balance that he hopes to break at Stamford Bridge. Will cost.

Taking into account the recent statistics of the two flat earthers (one, Chelsea, repentant like Galileo; another, Madrid, persistent) the parade of a column of armored vehicles was announced. Taking care of the lineups, too. Zidane went to the three centrals, which is now a lesser evil for several reasons. The main one, that Benzema's entourage in attack is very far from those times of the BBC, a bomber who did not look to the rear and who more than justified that crazy 4-3-3 spree. But it is that in addition to Zidane, although late, the bench has appeared with the rebirth of Nacho and Militao (excellent again), plus Marcelo, who with the network of an extra center still has a route and the plus of experience in a competition that he and Madrid translate like no one else.

Tuchel didn't touch anything either. He has done well with that 3-4-2-1 that walls the team in the center with Kanté and Jorginho, a double-turn lock, and without his star signing, Havertz, who still has to take that rogue point that the Premier has. The party, in any case, had more progress than expected. The armored car passed by.

The blue herd

Chelsea is a team of enormous physical exuberance for which any area of ​​the field is profitable. With and without the ball. More even without the ball. So, showing off extreme vigor, he went to look for Madrid wherever he was. For the centrals, for the sides, for Casemiro, for the builders. That blue herd was a real nuisance for Zidane's team. More with a referee, Makkelie, very permissive with the contact.

Tuchel's Chelsea is an expert in penalizing the loss of others. He was able to do it early, on an arrival from Mount, with Pulisic's left head and shoulders Werner's shot three meters from the goal line. Courtois put out a foot for reflexes and avoided a sure goal. That did not end with the dominance of Chelsea, a team of extraordinary aggressiveness and a pace much higher than that of this exhausted Madrid. So before the quarter of an hour I would repeat. Pulisic found the backs of the centrals in a shipment from Rüdiger, he patiently dodged Courtois and scored between the Madrid centrals, who were waiting on the line for the inevitable. Zidane's team poorly defended the action from start to finish.

Chelsea only seemed vulnerable to Vinicius' run over speed, little taken advantage of, and to the goblin of Benzema, who has learned, by force, to live in solitude. With no help other than his ingenuity, he invented a left foot to the post to proclaim that Madrid existed. Meanwhile, Modric, Casemiro and Kroos were passed over by the match. Its engine was out of reach of the roadrunner Kanté, Jorginho or the devilish Mount, a knife with space ahead.

And in this scenario of maximum adversity, Madrid tied. A Marcelo cross went through the heads of Casemiro and Militao until they reached Benzema, who came out of the trance with two stunts: a head control and a tremendous volley. He was a player against the world. The Frenchman's goal and the incessant rain lowered Chelsea's temperature until the break on a glass lawn.

Equality

The start of the second half was closer to the predictions. Madrid shortened the distance between the lines and seemed to protect itself better, and Chelsea no longer found so many doors to sneak through. The impression remained that both concluded that the battle was going to be long and that any additional risk was unnecessary. A game with less noise played in favor of the one with less rhythm, clearly Madrid.

In that period of calm Vinicius and Zidane painted little he threw himself into the arms of Hazard, that eternal convalescent that almost two years ago he arrived to skip the team. Tuchel, aware that the game already sounded like a bolero, switched to one footballer per line with no other pretense than to restart that high-volume engine. That balanced situation already seemed a success to Madrid, aware that in the first part he had been overwhelmed.

A quarter of an hour from the end, Madrid's sides raised a white flag and Zidane, who no longer had any more, had no choice but to place Asensio as a left-handed winger. The changes revitalized Madrid with some hopeful details from Hazard. Perhaps there, on the most unexpected side, is your ticket to Istanbul.