Clash of Kings at Stamford Bridge

Stamford Bridge hosts the first round of a clash of kings. Real Madrid, thirteen times European champion, seeks to avenge the elimination it suffered last year in the semifinals of its fetish competition at the hands of a Chelsea that defends the crown that it won in Porto in the midst of an institutional crisis derived from the Russian invasion to Ukraine that has the London club handcuffed. Thomas Tuchel’s team, beaten on the last day of the Premier by the modest Brentford, clings to the memory of a tie that opened the door to the conquest of the second ‘orejona’ in its history to receive with high spirits a squad that is not going through its best moment of the course, but that intimidates the continent again after knocking down the pharaonic PSG with an epic comeback to the roar of its fans.

To continue aspiring to recover the throne that it last occupied in 2018, Real Madrid will have to behead the current champion of the Champions League, something that the whites already did on their way to the ‘seventh’, the ‘eighth’, the ‘ninth’ and the ‘tenth’. As then happened with Borussia Dortmund, Manchester United and Bayern Munich, the latter twice, Chelsea now stands in the way of the Chamartín team to the final that will host the Parisian venue of Saint-Denis on May 28. A formidable rival, despite walking on quicksand.

The sanctions imposed against the Russian oligarchs have paralyzed the management of Chelsea, whose accounts have been frozen while waiting for the sale of the entity to be completed and the successful stage that began in 2003 with the entry into its capital to be definitively closed. by Roman Abramovich. Despite the turbulence in the offices, Tuchel had managed to maintain the steady pace of a team that chained nine consecutive victories between the end of January and mid-March. But the setback suffered last Saturday with the 1-4 endorsed by Brentford has generated doubts about a block that in the previous campaign suffocated a Real Madrid caught with tweezers with its physical exuberance.

The ‘blues’ then drew a tie at one from their visit to Alfredo Di Stéfano and beat a troop that came to London under minimum conditions 2-0 at Stamford Bridge. With Carvajal, Lucas Vázquez and Varane out due to injury, and Mendy and Sergio Ramos far from the tone required for an appointment of such substance, Zinedine Zidane sewed an atypical scheme with three central defenders and Vinicius as a right winger that was shipwrecked on the banks of the Thames. He was the fifth scratch for Chelsea in as many duels with Real Madrid and the sixth for Tuchel, who the Whites have not scratched either.

Intensity

The Chamartín team, pending a negative in the PCR so that Carlo Ancelotti can travel to London and sit on the bench, faces the challenge of breaking these two adverse streaks and giving a blow of authority that dispels the suspicions that have germinated after the defeat in the classic of the Bernabéu. The pyrrhic victory against Celta led Courtois to raise his voice against the lack of intensity at certain moments of a team without the automatisms or the legs required to press harmoniously and that can suffer a lot with the electric transitions of Chelsea, which has bullets upstairs and marathoners in its engine room.

To compensate for this physical deficit, Ancelotti could give Valverde a reel. The Halcón charrúa is going through a great moment of form and adds merits, with Real Madrid and with his national team, to gain weight in the Italian coach’s plans. The rest of the eleven is clear, with the octopus Courtois back at the stadium that paid homage to him for four seasons, a Militao warned of sanction as cacique of the rear, the three tenors in the middle and Benzema struggling to cut ground to Lewandowski and Haller in the table of top scorers in the Champions League.

On the local side, everything indicates that Tuchel will return to his most classic scheme, after the experiment with a defense of four that failed against Brentford. The ‘blues’, who will be able to count on the support of the stands thanks to an exception to the draconian measures that prevent them from selling tickets, among other issues, will try to reissue the formula that brought them huge profits against Real Madrid eleven months ago: armor behind to run over whites on the run.