Chelsea announce themselves Champions League title contenders and smother Atletico Madrid with ease

Hakim Ziyech‘s first half goal must have landed with a familiar thud for Diego Simeone. How often had he seen his team do much the same: soak up pressure, draw their opponent up the pitch and then, in the blink of an eye, rifle to the other end of the pitch to punish their opponents.

Chelsea had just meted out on Atletico Madrid what the Spaniards have been perfecting for nine years under their current manager. Thomas Tuchel seems to have built a decent approximation of that approach in a few months, albeit one that uses possession as a weapon, enough to take his side to a commanding 2-0 win at Stamford Bridge. It’s a win that will serve as a shot across the bows to the other seven teams left in this contest. Eliminating a serial contender like Atleti in such comprehensive fashion ought to mark this team out as serious contenders.

Whether defense does indeed win championships rather depends on the moment but what Chelsea showed tonight is that they are sufficiently robust at the back to not give away many goals to all but the very best attacks… and even they will have to work exceedingly hard for them. Couple that with a frontline that, in whatever form Tuchel deploys it, has the individual quality to punish even half mistakes and there is a team here that no-one will relish drawing in Friday’s quarterfinal draw.

This was no carbon copy of the first leg. Atletico did not play not to concede, how could they after Olivier Giroud’s wonder goal in Bucharest put the Blues in the ascendancy? But, equally, the experience of watching the game was not all that different. This was pulverizing football, a reminder that teams capable of executing at both ends of the pitch usually nullify each other more effectively than they light up their stage.

A raucous Stamford Bridge with a packed away end might have brought more flavor to this contest, which ultimately petered out after Ziyech finished off a crushing counterattack in the 34th minute. But, as is, there was something grimly appropriate about Chelsea’s ability to lock down every corridor at Stamford Bridge. Timo Werner typified the new-found ability to shut out opponents that Tuchel has imbued in this side, blocking Kieran Trippier’s cross before bursting forward to join Kai Havertz on a counter that would end with him rolling the ball across goal to an unmarked team-mate.

It helps when you have an attack of such pace and technical excellence that all they need is a bit of space in behind to score but this was not a game defined by Ziyech, but rather by Antonio Rudiger, Kurt Zouma and in particular N’Golo Kante, much as Andreas Christensen and Mason Mount had been defensive stars in the first leg.

As Ziyech noted, this was really not that much of a challenge for Chelsea: “There were some difficult moments in the game but for most of the time we had it under control.

“It was a bit like seeing how the game would go for 10 minutes and after that we had control. We did well. They didn’t create a lot. We can be happy about the performance.”

Happy is quite the understatement. This tie was a masterclass in attrition from Chelsea. Across 180 minutes of football against La Liga’s leading lights they allowed shots worth a combined 1.37 expected goals (over a third of which came from Thomas Lemar’s near goal-line miss early in the first leg) while creating 2.92 of their own expected goals, scoring three of them.

Chelsea were defense-oriented and such an approach can require a scintilla of luck. That is what Cesar Azpilicueta had when he miscued a back pass and tugged down Yannick Carrasco, who seemed certain to beat Edouard Mendy to the ball. It should have been a penalty; had Atletico scored it moments before Ziyech struck at the other end the complexion of the tie would have radically altered.

Source : CBS News