Brushing aside Atlético showed the club are back on track and players are revelling in the manager’s counter-attacking verve
There was a sense on Wednesday night that it was almost too easy. As Chelsea held Atlético Madrid at arm’s length with a performance of tremendous purpose and intelligence, the brain was tricked into believing this was just another curiously scheduled Premier League game. Or had they perhaps brought Sunday’s FA Cup quarter-final against Sheffield United forward by a few days? Only the occasional close-up of Koke or Luis Suárez, or an increasingly despondent Diego Simeone prowling the touchline, offered a reminder that this was Atlético, the leaders of La Liga, experienced old Champions League campaigners, the gnarled scrappers who eliminated Liverpool last season.
Perhaps some caution is necessary. La Liga, its period of hegemony over (England pulled level with Spain at the top of the coefficient table on Thursday and the direction of travel is clear), has lapsed into decadence, debt-ridden and moribund, its football notably lacking in pace and verve. What Atlético did to Liverpool last season, as the Covid storm clouds brewed, the coming crisis ready to expose the shonky financial underpinning of the Spanish game, increasingly feels anachronistic, one final flailing of the old empire. Beating the presumptive Spanish champions is perhaps no longer quite the scalp it once was.
