Florentino Pérez always puts the Real Madrid-Chelsea match as an example of what the European Super League would bring in which the white club is committed. And he justifies it with a fact. The president of Madrid finds it unpresentable that throughout history both teams have only met twice to date in European qualifiers. The third is the one that begins tonight, the first leg of the quarterfinals of a Champions League that catches the English club in full convulsion, 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 of the house who has also trained 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 like a clear favourite, but Chelsea is one of the few teams that can boast of beating Madrid in their matches. Although in the last two Champions League 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 Cup Winners' Cup final 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 beat them again in another final, this time the European Super Cup in Monaco and the Galacticos, with a goal by Gustavo Poyet in the 83rd minute.
Chelsea also already knows what it's like to win the Champions League with an interim coach. 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 him won the final against Pep Guardiola's Manchester City in Porto.
The Chelsea that goes to the Bernabéu today is eleventh in the Premier and has been unable to win in its last four games, resulting in two defeats and two draws, something that goes wrong with the investment of more than 600 million euros this season, from these more than 300 million in the winter market, invested in players like João Félix, Mudryk and Enzo Fernández. Of them, the Argentine is the undisputed starter in the middle along with former Real Madrid player Mateo Kovacic. João Félix is delivering and Mudryk is so far a disappointment.
The big problem with this Chelsea is their lack of goals. He arrives in Madrid without seeing the door in three games and is the least productive Chelsea since the 90s, 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 not be able to help today as he is not registered in 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.
