Chelsea give Barcelona the Blues
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Hello and welcome into the latest edition of ESPN FC. Kay Murray, Craig Burley and Stuart Robson joining us tonight as we talk Champions League. Kicking things off at Stamford Bridge where Chelsea were taking on Barcelona. We did see an early chance for Barcelona in the sixth minute through Ferran Torres, but that's about all we saw from them. in terms of getting in front of goal. As for Chelsea, they managed to put it in the net a few times. Hewitt disallowed, but in the 26th minute, an own goal put them ahead. It was Jules Koundé who scored that. We saw a special goal in the 55th from Estevao and Liam de Lappe scoring in the 73rd to make it 3-0. Red card for Araujo in the first half here. The first was a yellow for descent after Cucurella had fouled them in Yamal.
The foul wasn't called. And then about 10 minutes after that, He got a second yellow for a foul and was given his marching orders. Chelsea with the 3-0 win. Now, Mario Melchior here to talk more about what we've just seen. We're going to get to Chelsea. We're going to get to Chelsea's win. We must get to Barcelona, though, and the red card for Arauco because people will bring that up and say, yes, they were down to 10 men, but were they really even that competitive before it, Barca?
No, that was the one chance we saw Ferran Torres that he kind of rushed it a little bit. But no, if you've watched... Spanish football, as we do on a weekly basis, you'll know that this Barcelona side have got a good result at the weekend, the game you were doing, the Athletic Club were terrible. But Barca did a job. But they've been severely unconvincing defensively. And what we saw with 11 men was Chelsea able to dominate them. Before Orojo gets sent off for two stupid decisions. But that's who Barcelona are. And you guys were in Madrid. Sorry, you were in Spain to watch Real Madrid at the weekend, get a lucky draw against Elche. When you look at how they're playing and how this Barcelona team are playing, if one of these two wins the league, and that's the likely scenario, one of the worst champions in recent history, because they're both terrible.
Yeah, Barca can be more exciting going forward. But defensively, again... And we've said it time and time again. They had great success last year domestically, taking all these chances. But they're taking more chances this year defensively. They're squeezing the line in a very poor manner. They're squeezing at the wrong time. And almost every team they play, apart from Athletic Club at the weekend, are causing them problems. So this is who Barca are with 11 men. Don't kid yourself. This game was not about the red card. This was about Chelsea being the better side and all the problems that Barca have had this season, defensively in particular, coming home to roost.
And then not adjusting after you do go a man down.
They didn't adjust, but Craig's absolutely right. We've talked about their defensive, how poor they are defensively, and so nothing surprises you what we saw tonight. What did surprise me when they were 11 versus 11... They didn't really create anything. They didn't dominate the game. The midfield players, Frankie de Jong, usually controls the pace of the game. He couldn't do that. Of course, there's no Pedri in the side. But even the front, Lewandowski was hardly involved. Ferran Torres was taken off at half-time, maybe because they were down to 10 men, but he didn't make enough runs. And Lamin Yamal was almost non-existent. That's the worst I've seen him play since he's almost had a Barcelona shirt on.
Kukerea did a great job against him. I mean, if they lose their...
Impetus going forward. If they lose that ability to be as dynamic as they were last year, and I know Rafinha's been out, I know he came back, got some game time, I know he's been a big miss, and Pedri, as Robbo mentioned, obviously Pedri and De Jong have been at a great axis in their controlling games, but if they lose that ability as one of the most exciting players decisive opponents going forward with all the goal threat, if they somehow even lose 20 or 30% of that, they're not going to succeed.
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