Chelsea survive second-half blues vs. Sporting in Champions League win
Chelsea earned the first win of their UEFA Champions League campaign in Lisbon on Tuesday night by beating Sporting 1-0 on a Nemanja Matic header. It was a tight affair, and the result came in spite of a disconcertingly shoddy second-half performance from the Blues.
The game felt like something of an unintentional referendum on Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho and his methods, as he returned to the first big club to offer him a job as an interpreter 22 years ago. His side gave a schizoid account of its character, dominating and then getting dominated for a time.
In the first half, Chelsea reveled in the fluid, active and attractive soccer that has been a staple of Mourinho’s second epoch at the club. They put Sporting under immense pressure early on. Whereas his sides had routinely bunkered in to avoid defeat when on the road in continental action ever since his break-out years at FC Porto over the last decade – during his initial spell at Chelsea and periods at Inter Milan and Real Madrid – Chelsea gleefully strode forward.
Mourinho has assembled the players to do that, and as ever, Oscar, Eden Hazard and Andre Schurrle were a menace as they ran around behind the sort-of-but-not-quite-injured Diego Costa. The Spanish-Brazilian striker, whose tweaky hamstring evidently didn’t bother him enough to sit the game out, was sprung in just the second minute. He rampaged at Rui Patricio by himself from just past the half-way line, but the goalkeeper got a foot against his finish to deny the in-form target man.
Splendid chances came on fast for the English side, as they picked out Costa again and again. Patricio was ever aware though and made himself big and impassable on a half-dozen occasions throughout the game.
In the 22nd minute, Chelsea should have gone ahead. Hazard was played into acres of space on the right. Costa made a decoy run on the defense as the Belgian winger cut his pass behind the back line and into the path of the wide-open Schurrle. He had but to put the ball on the frame on his late run, but tried to finish it fancily by sliding it into the far corner. Schurrle, shamefully, put that shot wide.
Matic finally delivered the winner for Chelsea in the 34th minute. A wide free kick from string-puller Cesc Fabregas sailed over the pack in the goal mouth but right onto Matic’s head. The Serb contorted himself to drop it over Patricio and into the far corner with a deft nod.
More Chelsea goals seemed but a matter of time. Yet the second half brought an almost total reversal of the narrative. At first at least. Chelsea’s Filipe Luis should perhaps have been called for a penalty for pushing Nani over at the edge of his own box. Emboldened, Sporting started finding wide avenues between and through Chelsea’s lines on quick transitions as Nani, William Carvalho and Islam Slimani ran rampant. They forged plenty of chances, but never got all that close to scoring.
Still, Chelsea suddenly looked terribly shaky. It seemed then, that perhaps Mourinho had been right all along to value caution above all else in so many continental campaigns of yore. His teams have never looked as pretty as this Chelsea has in the last season and change, but they were hardly as vulnerable as the Blues now suddenly proved to be either.
It was perhaps telling that the insertion of Jon Obi Mikel, a bruising holding midfielder, for the whimsical attack-only playmaker Oscar turned the tide for Chelsea. He solidified things after the 70th minute and Chelsea regrouped fairly well for the remainder of the game. Costa and Co. missed several more big chances but they held on.
This remains a young Chelsea side. Mourinho had said last year that they weren’t ready to compete for the Premier League then. They appear more than ready now and have been utterly dominant on the home front. To achieve the same in Europe though, and to advance deep into this tournament with a mostly rebuilt side, they will have to take some lessons from Mourinho’s old sides.
In Europe, a little cynicism at the expense of aesthetics can be worthwhile trade-off.
