Chelsea are out of the Champions League but they exited with pride and no little magnificence.
You think you have no horse in this race. You think you feel roughly the same about every European super-club run by rich, ruthless billionaires. You think you have no latent patriotism that makes you support any and every English club in the Champions League. You think all that and then you find yourself up on your feet shouting “get the f*** in” when Timo Werner leaves three Real Madrid defenders on their arses and finishes emphatically at the second attempt to put Chelsea ahead for the first time in this tie after 165 ludicrous minutes that have showcased the very best and the very worst of both these clubs.
That’s what this Chelsea performance did to this neutral. It was a performance full of such intent, such verve, such invention and such heart that you could not help but be swept along with their hunger. This was a European champion refusing to go quietly into the night despite their task being described as “almost impossible” by the manager whose brilliance made it absolutely, completely possible.
Every decision Tuchel made was justified as early as the 15th minute, when the intelligence of Ruben Loftus-Cheek – tasked with playing a hybrid position that helped Reece James almost as much as it befuddled the Real players – created the overload which meant that the urgency of Mateo Kovacic was rewarded by the emphatic finish of Mason Mount. Loftus-Cheek,…
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