Rarely can a team have so little possession, so little control, yet come away with a victory, let alone against the side many believe is the best of all time. Yet Chelsea did precisely that. How they did it is possibly the most fascinating thing.
It would be fair to say that Chelsea defended well, rather than performed well. If football is about scoring goals as well as not conceding them, then Chelsea showed little of the former. It was coincidental that they managed to score with their only shot on goal, but that was what is known more commonly as a statistical anomaly. 99 times out of 100, a team having so few shots on target will lose. That the 1 out of 100 occurrence happened against the Champions of Europe is all the more remarkably, and shows the extent to which Lady Luck went out of her way for Roberto di Matteo – he must be quite the smooth talker.
This was helped though by the fact that Chelsea defended incredibly well, better perhaps, than any other team in history. It was a defensive performance even better than the famous catennacio of Jose Mourinho’s Inter Milan in the Nou Camp in 2010. In that game Barcelona had actually scored one, and had a perfectly good second goal, which would have taken them through to the final, ruled out incorrectly.
On Wednesday, Chelsea had a simple, but effective tactic. Take all 10 outfield players, including Drogba, and place them in the 15-20 yard square area in front of the penalty area that Barcelona like to play in. Then allow very little space between Drogba at the front and the back four. And then, prevent Maxwell and Dani Alves from opening up space by putting the workaholic Ramires on the latter and Raul Mereiles on the former. And when Barcelona do what they do best, pass quickly and swap positions, Chelsea’s players rigorously refused to be dragged out of position, and swapped responsibilities for marking whomever was closest to them. It was defensive genius. It meant Barcelona had very little space and very few options.
What this match shows therefore, is just how good Barcelona are. Against a team who had pretty much blocked off the middle part of the pitch between the penalty area and half way line, Barcelona still created no less than seven brilliant scoring opportunities. First Alexis Sanchez chipped onto the bar, then Cesc Fabregas missed from close range, before the same player chipped Petr Cech only to see Ashley Cole scurry the ball away. Then Fabregas chipped over the defence for Sanchez, who contrived to miss from just yards out. Thiago Alcantara then was inches away from connecting with the ball from point blank range, before Pedro hit the post and Sergio Busquets skied the rebound with the goal gaping.
It is quite remarkable therefore, that a team who make almost no effort to attack, who block off the key creative areas of the pitch with big, physical players who will run and run and run, are still carved open for seven gilt edged chances. On another night, this game would have ended 5-0. In fact, if they played the game 99 more times, that would probably have been the average score. Indeed a member of the Getafe technical staff, according to Sid Lowe, said something to that effect after they had beaten Barcelona 1-0, having also had just one shot and conceded 17 chances.
Yet as noted in this column the other day, luck is that most important of factors in football that can never be ignored. It is how a team can only have one shot on goal and still win 1-0 against a team with 72 per cent possession.
So it is wrong to say Chelsea played well. We are often reminded that defending is part of the game. Yes, it is. But the same goes for attacking, of which Chelsea did very little. Their attacks consisted of lumping the ball up to Didier Drogba and hoping he could hold the ball for more than 3 seconds. Or launching a long throw from Branislav Delapovic, sorry, Ivanovic, into what English football fans often affectionately refer to as “the mixer”.
Well done, Chelsea, though – they put on what must be up there with the all time great defensive performances. But it will take a bizarre aberration of probability for them to still go through to the final. Barcelona’s defeat last night was not just the result of great defending. It was also the result of a remarkable statistical freak. Chelsea need another great performance defensively, and an even bigger statistical outlier to occur next week, to go through.
