Florentino Pérez always puts the Real Madrid-Chelsea match as an example of what the European Super League would offer in which the white club is numb. And he justifies it by adding a fact. The president of Madrid finds it unrepresentable that throughout history the two teams have only met twice in the European qualifiers to date. The third is the one that starts tonight, the first leg of the quarter-finals of a Champions League that takes the English club in full turmoil, with Frank Lampard landing on the bench, the third coach in a week after the controversial Graham Potter and the interim Bruno Saltor. Frank Lampard, a man from the house who has also coached Everton (like Ancelotti), has finally been chosen from a casting that also included Luis Enrique.
A priori, Madrid’s solvency in the Champions League makes it seem clear favourite, but Chelsea is one of the few teams that can boast of beating Madrid in their crossovers. Although in the last two Champions Leagues each team obtained a classification, the two most distant antecedents favor the English, who beat the Whites in two finals. In 1971, Chelsea beat the Whites in the final of the Recopa that was played in Athens after a tiebreaker: 1-1 in the first and 2-1 in the final. And more recently, in 1998, they won another final, this time the European Super Cup in Monaco and the Galacticos, with a goal from Gustavo Poyet in the 83rd minute.
He did it twice: in 2012 with the Italian Di Matteo, who had replaced André Villas-Boas that season to beat Bayern in Munich. And he repeated it again in 2021 with Thomas Tuchel, who replaced Lampard himself at the end of that January and with whom Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City won the final in Porto.
Chelsea, who go to the Bernabéu today, are eleventh in the Premier League and have been unable to win their last four games, with two defeats and two draws, which does not go well with the investment of more than 600 million euros this season, 300 millions of which in the winter market, invested in players like João Félix, Mudrik and Enzo Fernández. Of them, the Argentine is the undisputed starter in the middle with ex-Madridista Mateo Kovacic. João Félix is ​​delivering and Mudrik is so far a disappointment.
The big problem with this Chelsea is the lack of goals. He arrives in Madrid without seeing a goal in three games and is Chelsea’s lowest scorer since the 1990s, a team led by Zola. Neither Kai Havertz (7 goals), nor Raheem Sterling (4) have lived up to expectations and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who was ostracized by Lampard last weekend, will also not be able to help today because he is not registered for the Champions League . The best news for the Blues is the return of N’Golo Kanté, who missed seven months of competition with a hamstring injury and has been able to play two games in recent weeks.
