TORRES STILL A EURO STAR
Striker is back on song but Ramires sees red
WHAT a difference a striker makes. All the difference, in fact. The most passes: Bayern Munich. The most possession: Bayern Munich. That beautiful, match defining moment: Chelsea.
It wasn’t enough to give Chelsea UEFA’s Super Cup in normal time. Once again it was going to take more than 90 minutes to separate these two teams, yet without the influence of a European goalscorer supreme, Chelsea would have yielded to Munich long before the end.
Instead, they were in there fighting to the last. Munich perhaps had the best of it overall, but then they should. This is an epic, treble-winning, team, arguably the best the Bundesliga has produced, that this summer attempted the impossible — an upgrade, with the appointment of Pep Guardiola.
It is his rivalry with Chelsea’s Jose Mourinho, forged in Spain with Barcelona and Real Madrid, that gave this game its additional spice. Yet Guardiola predicted the coaches would play second fiddle to their players and so it proved.
The main talking point was how toothless Chelsea had looked without a conventional striker against Manchester united last Monday, and how lively they were by comparison here. They frequently worried Munich’s back line and Guardiola’s deployment of Toni Kroos as a forward sweeper in what was, at times, a five-man defence was an indication of respect for Chelsea’s threat.
Fernando Torres will have been doing a lot of thinking this week. There was the team sheet at Manchester united that did not include his name, or that of any front-line goalscorer at the club. Then there was the arrival of a true rival in Samuel Eto’o.
Yet if Torres had a point to prove, a reminder to serve, he did so in the eighth minute at the Eden Stadion in Prague. He may have his critics in English football, but in Europe this last year there were few better. Only two players scored more goals than Torres in UEFA club fixtures last season, and he carried that form on here, completing one of the fine counter-attacking moves that Guardiola so feared from Mourinho’s Chelsea. The Bayern Munich coach anointed Mourinho as the master of the counter on the eve of this
game, in what may have been interpreted as faint praise. Yet here, as Chelsea turned a Bayern Munich forward move into a desperate rearguard action, it did not look like an ordinary skill. The way Chelsea moved the ball from back to front was visual poetry, such balance, such perfection.
They ripped Munich apart, held up all their weaknesses for inspection in the space of several seconds. And at the climax, there was Torres with the cutting edge. It was exactly what was missing at Old Trafford.
Eden Hazard carried the ball through the centre of Bayern Munich and in doing so left Rafinha, the right back, in his wake. The Brazilian made some panicky attempts at matching his stride, but to no avail. Dragged out of position to cover he was always at a disadvantage.
Hazard fed Andre Schurrle — spearhead in Manchester, turned supporting forward here, and looking the happier for it — and his cross was met first-time by Torres with a simply blistering shot that left Manuel Neuer beaten in Bayern’s goal.
It was a brilliant start, a brilliant finish — Mourinho’s Chelsea at their best. Carry on like that and the growing controversy around the absence of Juan Mata will be no more than background noise.
Less than 10 minutes later, the same again. Another counter, Kroos nowhere, Rafinha flummoxed, Torres a little too self-indulgent with a shot that may have been a cross, or vice versa, but either way ended up travelling behind the goal.
Chelsea could not possibly have it their own way for long against this level of opposition and so it proved. Stung by the early deficit, Munich pressed and Franck Ribery was soon showing why he was crowned UEFA’s Footballer of the Year for the 2012-13 campaign.
Just about all that was good for Munich came through him, beginning with an exchange of passes with Arjen Robben after 22 minutes that forced the first save of the night from Petr Cech, requiring strong hands, low to his left. Chelsea couldn’t keep a good man down forever, though, and two minutes into the second half Ribery equalised.
It was the quick thinking of Munich goalkeeper Neuer — surely the best in the world right now — that started the move. He played sweeper to a Chelsea advance and then quickly redistributed the ball, allowing Munich to strike swiftly at Chelsea’s recovering defence. It was a trademark Ribery approach that did the damage, receiving the ball high on the left, he cut inside and unleashed a shot that defeated Cech at his near post. Quite stunning, as he would need to be to force Lionel Messi into second place.
Neuer was as much the hero of the night for Munich, however, and with 12 minutes to go produced the save the of the match, one-handed from the head of Branislav Ivanovic.
He pulled off another, not quite as good, from David Luiz before Ramires was sent off for his second yellow card of the night, a trip on Ribery combining with a foolish two-footed tackle on Mario Gotze, which left Swedish referee Jonas Eriksson with little option
It might be argued that Dante did, too, when he went through the back of Hazard having already been booked, but the official did not see it that way, much to Mourinho’s public disgust.