Chelsea 2 Benfica 1
Barcelona 3 Milan 1
_______________
Roman will not be impressed by that.
What’s Russian for, “We were crap. But we won”?
It looked as if Chelsea had 10 men, not Benfica.
Benfica had four centrebacks injured.
So their defence was there for the taking.
Ashley Cole won a penalty in 20 minutes and Frank Lampard scored.
Keeper Artur dived over a low shot to his right. If the ball had been near to Artur\’s glove he might have saved it. But the penalty shot went low and under his arm, to make it 2-0 on aggregate.
Having been booked for dissent early on, Maxi went to ground and clattered his studs into the ankle of Mikel.
Red card, 40 minutes. Game over, I thought.
Not so.
Benfica played far more football with ten men than Chelsea did with eleven.
Kalou, always more of a warrior than a craftsman, was particularly dismal. It’s a very long time since I\’ve seen Kalou play as badly as this.
The whole thing was a reminder that Chelsea are a methodical counter-attacking outfit, not a keep-ball team.
Their front three were clueless, so much so that Chelsea could have lost.
FACT : Torres, Mata and Kalou have no relationship at all.
Zero rapport. Zilch. Nothing. Staggeringly bad.
Hardly one pass was synchronised to a run. They were shocking and what was even worse was that none of the three strikers had any relationship to the three midfield players.
There no fluency, no teamwork, no automatic.
They just couldn’t keep the ball. Between 45 and 59, Chelsea were totally unconvincing in attack.
And when John Terry went off with a rib injury, they got worse. Pedestrian, slow, feeble.
Benfica’s passing was quicker and more inventive. Sub Yannick Djalo mistimed a header from a Capdevilla cross. Then Cech saved a better header by the West African-born Portuguese international.
Faced by an obviously inswinging corner, David Luiz went AWOL as Javi Garcia jumped to head in from two yards.
FREE HEADER FROM TWO YARDS !
Cech was scared to go for the ball because he was scared of getting hit.
The fourth official\’s board signalled four minutes of injury time and in the 92nd minute Chelsea broke away and scored the winner.
Sub Raul Meireles made a fast break through an under-populated midfield, Ramires made a lung-bursting sprint to overtake him and distract the centreback, allowing Meireles the room to hit a swerving thunderbolt into the top corner for 2-1.
Lucky old Chelsea were flattered by a 3-1 aggregate victory.
As Alan Mullery said on Sky Sports News, “They’ve been outplayed tonight by ten men.”
Chelsea v Barcelona over two legs?
I think they’ll get battered in that semi. Annihilated.
The only factor in their favour is that, in between the two Chelsea legs, Barcelona have a clasico that they need to win to close the gap on Real Madrid.
On Tuesday, Iniesta scored a very slick goal to make it Barcelona 3 Milan 1.
Sometimes, to score a goal, you have to mentally sharp as well as technically adept, I love players who are as good off the ball as they are on the ball. Marc Overmars wasn\’t just fast. He knew when to run and where to run to get a pass.
When Iniesta scored, I loved the goal. And then I started to wonder : Who else could have scored that goal in that way from that situation? The answer was : Marc Overmars.
Iniesta and Mexes and both knew that Messi was about to shoot. Mexes went for the block and Iniesta put on the brakes. He held his run because he sensed that the ball might break for him and, sure enough, the ball squirted forward off Mexes into the area and Iniesta made sure he was perfectly paced to kill the ball with single touch of his left foot, so that it sat on the six yard line, waiting to be dispatched past Abbiati.
We saw the little maestro sidefoot in for 3-1.
Right foot, very precise, giving the keeper no chance to react. Made it look so simple. A world class finish by a razor-sharp footballer.
At 2-1, after those two Messi penalties, I was thinking : How weird would it be to see Barcelona win without scoring a goal in open play?
Then Iniesta scored that lovely goal in open play.
What else was notable? The constant arm-grabbing of Ambrosini for a dirty Milan side who got seven yellow cards.
Surprise choice of Cuenca, who hugged the left touchline in the first half, hugged the right touchline in the second.
Fabregas, starting, was all kinds of average.
An interesting game in which Milan DID carry a goal threat and Nocerino made it 1-1 in 32, after Mascherano played him onside, from a lovely pass by Ibra.
When the Dutch referee actually gave an early penalty for blatant shirt-pulling by Nesta on Busquets, I was surprised and delighted. When I saw the theatrics of self-pity, the operatic protests by the cheating crybabies, I laughed out loud.
Man of the match : Bjorn Kuipers.
A ref who enforces the rules. Hallelujah!
I saw John, my gambling greengrocer, at 6.30pm. His brother Larry is a builder, Adam is a carpenter, they’re refurbing John’s kitchen.
John said, “I’ve done Real Madrid-Apoel, both teams to score. That will pay for my radiator.”
Real had won 3-0 in Cyprus and last night they won 5-2.
Good call, John !
The other semi is Bayern Munich v Real Madrid.
I’m not anti-Chelsea but I’m not going along with a mainstream media narrative of “unfinished business” for Chelsea.
Benfica don’t have one player who would get into the Barcelona squad. But they outplayed Chelsea with 10 men.
Putting it another way, only Ramires and Ivanovic would get near Barcelona’s first team.
I can’t see it.
I think Chelsea will get pulverised on the 18th and the 24th.