Chelsea beat Barcelona 3-2 on aggregate in the UEFA Champions League after a 2-2 draw on the night. The decorated one touch shoe-shine piano known as the tiki-taka football counted for naught when the moment to separate boys from men arrived at the Camp Nou. Chelsea entered the treacherous jungle of Barcelona under the circumstances only likened to the lion's den.
The early quick exchanges from the hosts threatened to render the match a suicidal undertaking by the Londoners as Lionel Messi ran through earlier on. The initial runs into the box promised an avalanche of goals for a potential landslide victory.
Until the moment of Barca's Busquests' goal in the 35th minute, the evidence of Chelsea being at the wrong place was everywhere for all to see. The Cesc Fabregas low cross from the left caught Ashley Cole on the wrong side of action.
The moment of craziness from John Terry dumped the English Premier League giants into the 'new buffalo mother's pen as the match took a twist for the worst for the visitors. Terry was red-card for an off-the ball incident for pushing his knee at the back of of Alexis.
The patient build-ups of the Catalans proved too powerful for Chelsea as they saw Messi flying in with an enterprising one-two with Iniesta who blasted in a goal in the 43rd minutes with a low shot past Petr Cech. The flowing exchanges continued with Barca threatening to run away with the match.
In a very rare swift counter attacking movement, Frank Lampard put a though ball that Ramirez ran onto and chipped in a wonder goal in the 45th+1 minute of the match.
The Blues defended with their lives as Barca pushed harder to restore order. A very controversial soft penalty was awarded when Didier Drogba caught Cesc inside the box. The non malicious challenge proved to be innocent as the resultant spot kick was missed by the usually magical Messi, who crushed the cross-bar.
Drogba had his chances including the rounding off of the defence and that long range speculative attempt. The Ivory Coast striker put up a man-of-the-match performance with his close ball control under tight situations and fighting a lone battle upfront.
The excellent Cech saves also proved to be the difference between Barcelona and the final as he used his legs and body to thwart the marauding Barcelona attacks. The desperate Spanish giants started to push further in characteristically Arsenal fashion.
Barca were pushing forward too hard too often too long, without re-organising by restarting the formula. They camped outside the Chelsea box and kept the visitors happy clonking the ball out with every opportunity as the coiled into a 1-6-2-1 formation.
All the Blues could do was to allow Barca to shuttle across the 18-yard-box exerting sterile pressure, as Messi lost his running momentum as a result. In few moments that Chelsea pushed forward, there was a realistic chance of the fading La Liga giants grabbing a goal as they shunned to shoot from long range.
In that arrangement, Messi should have been sweeper, collecting the ball from deep areas and came running at the defenders, but Pep Guardiola failed to tactically re-arrange the situation to suit the developments.
As it was becoming less apparent that Chelsea would hold on until the final whistle, the football of passing the ball around with less penetrative force looked certain to win the day for Barcelona as they threw everything into attack.
The 50-million-pound Fernando Torres pounced onto a very long clearance in the 90+2 minute, rounded off Valdes and slotted the ball into the empty net to usher the death knell for the best team in the world.
For Chelsea, it was revenge for the drama of the 'disgraceful' encounter of a few years back, and without a regular experienced manager in Roberto Di Mateo and captain Terry, playing with 10 men and their conventional central defenders out and even two goals down, the English team looked dead and buried.
The referees did not seem to be helping their cause and playing at the Camp Nou in-front of that hostile crowd was intimidatory. Chelsea played with their heads, hearts and bodies, committing fully into tackles and fighting for each other.
It must be said that they rode their luck well given that their two of the three shots on target were goals, compared to the twenty two of Barcelona.
Will they face Real Madrid of the 17th of May 2012?
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