Iran Press/ Europe: On Tuesday night, Real Madrid welcome Chelsea to the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu for the second leg of their Champions League quarter-final. The two teams met at Stamford Bridge one week ago, and a brilliant performance from Karim Benzema was the difference between the two sides on the night.
Carlo Ancelotti went with an unchanged lineup from the team that won 3-1 at Stamford Bridge last week. Thomas Tuchel, meanwhile, put Reece James up against Vinicius and added Ruben Loftus-Cheek to the midfield.
Chelsea dominated the first half from then on, but were not quite able to fashion another high-quality opening, often seemingly not quite pressing the issue as much as we perhaps should have.
The second half began the way the first ended, and it didn’t take long to find a second goal on the night, Rüdiger powering in a header from a corner (which probably wasn’t a corner).
And it was still all Chelsea as we looked for a third. The first time we found it, it got ruled out by VAR for the ball (supposedly) grazing Marcos Alonso’s hand. But there was no doubt about Timo Werner’s goal, to make it 3-0 on the night and 4-3 on aggregate.
But there were still 15 minutes to go, and unfortunately, our lead lasted just a few minutes as Real Madrid finally woke up and grabbed an equalizer on aggregate by way of a ridiculous Modrić pass and an easy Rodrygo finish — though not before Thibaut Courtois made a great save on a Kai Havertz header to prevent his side going down 4-0.
Chelsea were able to collect ourselves after that brief shaky period and probably should’ve won it before the end of regulation, with Christian Pulisic coming close twice in added-on time.
And those misses came back to haunt us, with Karim Benzema finding the back of the net in extra time after a miscommunication and a slip at the back. Chelsea had a few chances to get back one more time, especially from set-pieces, but there would be no fairy tale ending. Not quite clinical enough in the end.
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