Striker picks himself up to deliver Nou hope for Blues

REVENGE? NEVER crossed their mind. That little business in 2008-09 was not going to have any effect on last night’s semi-final first leg. Of course it wasn’t. Which was why Roberto Di Matteo selected Didier Drogba, suspended for five European matches after cursing Tom Henning Ovrebo so vividly from one end of the Fulham Road to the other, instead of Fernando Torres, the scorer of seven goals in 10 appearances for Atletico Madrid against Barcelona in La Liga.

And look at it this way: going into the match, Drogba could lay claim to 32 goals in the Champions League while Torres’s career total stands at two – a big reason, surely, for preferring the 34-year-old Ivorian to a Spaniard who, although now 28 years old, still seems to retain traces of boyishness reminiscent of the days when he was nicknamed El Nino, The Kid.

If the match started as a caricature of expectations, with Chelsea watching apprehensively as the black shirts of Barcelona ghosted through the evening drizzle, rolling the ball around to their hearts’ content, there were early indications that the home side, and Drogba in particular, would have their opportunities.

The first had its origins in anxiety but was still instructive. With the match a mere three minutes old, Gary Cahill turned the ball back to Petr Cech. The goalkeeper’s giant clearance was met by Drogba with a first touch that diverted the ball in the right direction but with too little finesse, allowing Victor Valdes to mop up the danger. Four minutes later John Terry stepped in to break up a Barcelona move inside his own half and played an instant pass for Drogba, who made the right run but again pushed the ball too far ahead, allowing Carles Puyol to intercept.

Then came another of those passages in which Chelsea could only watch and hope as the ball was shuttled back and forth between Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Cesc Fabregas, Alexis Sanchez and Lionel Messi. This one ended with Iniesta looping a pass over the defence for Sanchez to lob the ball over Cech and against the bar. But soon Drogba was demonstrating another option by flicking the ball through for Ramires to force action from Valdes, before the Ivorian dropped deep into his half to send an even better ball up the inside-left channel, aimed at Ramires, whose run was matched by that of Puyol.

The defending champions continued to play their patient, progressive game – how interesting it might be to see them forced to do something else – and when Iniesta’s shot was parried by Cech, Fabregas’s attempt to convert the rebound was unwittingly blocked by Sanchez.

The visitors’ next chance game from their only long ball of the first half, when Terry headed away Javier Mascherano’s pass and Sanchez returned the ball from the right, Messi leaping for a header that forced Cech to a diving stop. Two minutes before half-time they came even closer when Messi outmuscled Mikel John Obi on the halfway line, sprinted away and fed Fabregas, whose chip was cleared off the line by Ashley Cole.

But then came Drogba’s moment, one that had seemed more likely to come every time he collapsed to the turf, waving his arm in what turned out on every occasion to be temporary distress. This time it was Messi losing the ball in the centre circle to Frank Lampard’s challenge, the England man playing the ball into the path of Ramires, who raced into the left-hand side of Barcelona’s area before turning back and, while off balance, hitting a pass – with his weaker left foot – that offered Drogba the most straightforward of chances to take his Champions League total to 33.

In its way Chelsea’s play was as cerebral as that of Barcelona, requiring a ferocious degree of concentration and awareness of the need to stand off, resisting the temptation to dive in. After the interval the vast majority of the game was played in the space between the halfway line and the edge of the Chelsea penalty area, with the five blue-shirted midfielders screening the patterns created by the men in black.

When Barcelona did penetrate the first line of defence, they were liable to find Cahill throwing himself in front of Messi to smother a shot, as he did three times between the 54th and 62nd minutes – or Terry doing the same in the 65th.

There was something impressive about Chelsea’s resistance. Again the effect of the makeover of recent weeks was making itself apparent as they moved towards giving themselves what most had considered an impossibility: a decent chance in the Camp Nou next week.

Guardian Service