Real Madrid-Chelsea No one comes back like Madrid

Ten semifinals in twelve years. With and without Cristiano, with and without Zidane, with and without Ancelotti, with and without a pandemic, with and without an audience. That devotion/obligation for the Champions League is transmitted in Madrid from generation to generation and is independent of who presides over it, trains it or represents it on the pitch. It is something customary, not written but accepted. And sometimes it has little to do with logic. Madrid played between bad and very bad during many phases of the match, but there is no team in the world with their spirit of survival. Chelsea, playing the champion, He got him with his 0-3 in comeback mode and there he is indestructible.

From the outset, what was expected happened: the same Madrid and another Chelsea. Ancelotti repeated with Valverde, who is no less than Rodrygo or Asensio with the ball and much more without it. And Tuchel took to the mountain: 4-3-3, two long-distance wingers, Loftus-Cheek in the center and Werner, a goalscorer after all. Changing everything so that everything would change was the plan to face a feline Madrid, crouched in wait for the ambush. The duel depended on the ability of the white team to overcome that first pressure from Chelsea, who came out like a beast to steal early and close to Courtois. He got it out and there he became diabolical.

In that tactically charged atmosphere little happened at first. A pipe from Vinicius that cost James the card (there is no scientifically proven system that does not fall apart due to a dribbler), an inopportune loss from Valverde, a high header from Rüdiger… Until the ghosts appeared: a good Werner-Mount combination left him inside the area in front of Courtois and there he did not spare. All of Madrid’s latest calamities in knockout ties that led to the Bernabéu with an advantage began in the same way: an early goal from the rival and a nervous breakdown on the pitch and in the stands.

The goal again left the tie on the wire. Chelsea emphasized their status as a territorial team, using patience until their opportunity appeared, and Madrid put almost everything to the whirlwind raised by Vinicius, to whom the English offered that space that makes him unstoppable. The English team has the danger very distributed. It is created by their full-backs, Loftus-Cheek coming from behind, Havertz and Mount surprising in the second row and Werner in the role of goal-hunter. And it cost Madrid much more than in London to escape from that well-woven network.

His only response to the goal was two long shots from Benzema, deflected by Thiago Silva, and Casemiro, into the stands. Chelsea’s long possessions disengaged the team of Benzema and Vinicius and their fans, who were put more in a situation by the uproar of the comeback than the patient resistance against a team whose dominance was not at all feigned. And it is that although football did not leave the gyms, the physical exuberance of the English clearly prevailed over the white midfielders and it gave him an advantage on almost every second move. There were no real threats on Courtois but there was a feeling that Madrid was going less and Chelsea more. The clash went to rest in the terms of last year’s tie and very far from the white exhibition at Stamford Bridge. That is the Champions League, a jungle with a changing climate.

Madrid followed the disaster manual to the letter. The goal at the beginning of the first half came a second at the beginning of the second. It was at the exit of a corner that the Polish Marciniak was invented and that Rüdiger nodded in the stratosphere. Chelsea had struck with the precision of a surgeon: twice and twice.

Only from then on, later, did Madrid want to be Madrid. From the field to the stands. When it seemed to get hot, Marcos Alonso, with the right, made the third prior error by Mendy. The rebound that left him in an unbeatable situation came after hitting his hand and the VAR came to the aid of Madrid. The Bernabéu was already in its sauce. Benzema missed a header off the crossbar. That effervescence lasted a sigh.

Chelsea soon recovered, defending themselves with the ball again, one of their specialties, and seemed to finish the job with a spectacular goal: Werner, a damned, cleared the area with two feints and sank the rapier into the heart of Madrid. Courtois saved the fourth in another great header, this one from Havertz. And with the team dying, Modric hit one of those high-precision outside passes and Rodrygo, a newcomer, spliced ​​it into the net. Incredibly, Madrid, reactivated by Camavinga, had gotten into a comeback atmosphere, although Pulisic missed two very clear ones later.

Ancelotti’s team went into extra time in a precarious situation, with Carvajal on full-back due to Nacho’s injury. And then, on the verge of that agony that dominates so well, Vinicius got the first one. He extended to the left and his tempered shot was finished off by Benzema with a single header. That head has taken Madrid to the semifinals and Chelsea to the grave. Everything that came after was heroic, from Modric to a lame Benzema. And against that incessantly repeated epic you cannot fight even from excellence.