Chelsea were on an emotional peak at the close of the win over Barcelona but Jose Mourinho is still in the foothills of his mission in England. The manager has said as much before when predicting that the best of his team will not be seen until his third year at Stamford Bridge. Tuesday brought one of the most memorable nights in the club’s history but it also showed just what Mourinho meant.
He claims that the side was designed to win the Premiership and, judging by the eight-point lead, the rest of us have to agree that his Chelsea are perfectly engineered for the task. Those domestic traits had to see them through to a 4-2 victory over Barcelona in a match of raging excitement. Mourinho’s team were resilient and forceful in recovering, with John Terry’s late goal, to reach the quarterfinals of the Champions League.
It would not have been half as much fun if Chelsea had done it the easy way but they will have to be far more methodical if Mourinho is again to collect the trophy he secured for Porto last year. The manager has the best side in the Premiership but that may only illustrate the gulf that has to be bridged before an English club can dominate the Champions League as Spanish, Italian and German rivals have done.
Chelsea, 3-0 up by the 20th minute, have mastered a cut-throat counter-
attacking style that is little-used in England but it was not foreseen that Barcelona would slice them open so repeatedly. Victory came only when the goalkeeper Victor Valdes, who would later protest that he had been fouled by Ricardo Carvalho, came for a corner he could not reach and left Terry with a header that slipped past everyone until the net stopped it, but it was the contrasting brilliance of his opposite number that swayed the match.
Without Petr Cech, Chelsea would not be in the quarterfinal draw to be made on March 18. ”I helped my team win the game,” said the goalkeeper, understating the matter. The defence, so accustomed to squelching every threat on the domestic scene, had its finest moments on Tuesday while making a frantic clearance or an appallingly risky challenge inside the penalty area such as Carvalho’s precision tackle on Samuel Eto’o.
The kaleidoscopic swirl of Barcelona’s moves left Chelsea groggy in midfield, where Claude Makelele, with too few team-mates showing similar watchfulness, could not snuff out threats single-handed as he does against lesser opponents.
Ronaldinho’s flame was never extinguished and his superb goal, struck with exquisite technique, consigned Cech to rueful admiration. ”When I saw the ball it was too late,” he said. ”Only Ronaldinho could have scored a goal like this.”
The Brazilian is worth the awe for a contribution such as that but his side do not live up to their reputation. Barcelona often swoon over their own legend as daredevil artists and it is an aversion to the basics of the game that has limited them to one European Cup in their history. At Stamford Bridge their defending was barely rudimentary and Mourinho appreciates that Milan are not the only club in the last eight who will present a more concerted challenge to Chelsea.
His squad, all the same, are heartened. While using his normal formation, Mourinho had Joe Cole as one of his three midfielders instead of the more conservative Tiago. He needed flair to counter-attack properly whenever Barcelona were sloppy and the Englishman, with a little luck on the first occasion, set up two goals.
The manager has sometimes been dismissive of Cole’s diligence but the aim of that public shaming has been to reform the player rather than ditch him. He is short of the expertise to disrupt Barcelona’s build-up but there was far more concentration and effort from him when Chelsea were not on the ball than we have seen before.
Barcelona’s disdain, in the aftermath of the first leg, for the way Mourinho’s side play was met with a resolve at Stamford Bridge that those methods should prevail.
”The idea that we’re boring and unexciting was shown to be wrong,” said Frank Lampard. ”I thought that all the talk from Barcelona between matches was strong because it was only half-time. That’s part of the reason why we started so strongly. It gave us an extra edge. Some of Barcelona’s possession play was fantastic but the game’s not all about possession.”
Chelsea ensured that their own approach prevailed. It was a hard climb to finish above Frank Rijkaard’s team and there is still a steep learning curve to be negotiated by Mourinho’s team if they are to come out on top in this season’s Champions League. — Â