Already, the Chelsea squad are talking about how they can do it, how it’s been done before. Recent Champions League seasons have, after all, had far bigger comebacks than that required by Thomas Tuchel’s side to overturn a 3-1 deficit at Real Madrid. He has been pointing to the lessons of some of them in his preparations, where the players have been revved up.
In that regard, Tuchel’s stark words on Wednesday that the tie was not alive have served their purpose. The squad have been riled.
They immediately responded with one of their most ravenous displays of the season, a 6-0 destruction of Southampton. That’s the mood they now go into the Bernabeu with. It marks quite a difference from how they finished the first leg at Stamford Bridge.
Tuchel himself inevitably changed tone. Where he had been rueful, he is now rallying.
The Chelsea manager said his players must not “accept” elimination, and that they can do that “by leaving everything on the pitch we have”.
“We know that we can take more risks and that we show our true face … it’s a beauty of the game that everything is possible, always,” he added.
The last few years have proven that it’s especially possible when teams don’t just see a comeback as some immense task to be scaled. They need to go step by step, especially since every step deeply changes the state of the game.
This is something Tuchel has been saying to his players.
Chelsea, after all, need a 3-0 win at the Bernabeu to go through, a feat that would usually seem “impossible”, as the manager put it.
The entire feel changes if they can even get one goal to get it to 3-2 on aggregate, though. Then, it’s not about something as big as winning 3-0 at the Bernabeu. It’s just about getting the next goal after that. It becomes easy to visualise.
This is how Madrid themselves played it when coming back from 2-0 down against Paris Saint-Germain. This is what Ole Gunnar Solskjaer articulated before Manchester United’s comeback against the same side.
It is the only way to go about such a feat, as Jurgen Klopp found against Barcelona in 2019.
It is what Tuchel meant when he said Chelsea must have “a match where belief grows within the match by our actions”.
There is one major complication for such a plan, though. That’s not Madrid, nor even the psychological challenge of doing this at this great stadium, as Tuchel referenced.
“It is one of the biggest challenges to perform as the away team at the Bernabeu,” the Chelsea manager said. “And it is even more difficult if you have to earn a certain result, if you need to win with a minimum of two goals, or even a three-goal difference.”
Benzema’s first-leg hat-trick was his second in as many Champions League knockout games
The last few years have proven that elite footballers should no longer be intimidated by such images. We’re in a new world. It is one reason Uefa got rid of the away goal rule.
It should also be some solace to Chelsea that Madrid scored three at Stamford Bridge, without those goals meaning what they used to.
The greatest complication, however, is the scorer of those goals.
Karim Benzema is in the kind of career form where he can undo any gameplan in a moment. He can easily make it so Chelsea have to get four or even five here. It’s an immense challenge to stop him in itself – especially when you’re chasing a game.
Benzema scored all three of his side’s goals as Real Madrid won 3-1 in west London last week
