Chelsea wave missed opportunity in Liverpool’s face with Real Madrid win

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Chelsea beat Real Madrid on Wednesday evening and waved a missed opportunity in Liverpool’s face as a result. The Reds have to correct this.

Chelsea 2-0 Real Madrid. 3-1 on aggregate. The Blues made it look quite easy in the end.

They let Real have the ball, even at Stamford Bridge. Los Blancos ended up with 68% possession, in fact, but couldn’t make things happen.

Chelsea could, though. They used the counter-attack wonderfully, making Real look quite slow in comparison. It was a gameplan executed to perfection in the end.

And with that, Liverpool can feel devastated. They missed a golden opportunity here.

Chelsea 2-0 Real Madrid

What’s infuriating here is that Chelsea but Real with the very gameplan Liverpool tried to implement. The Reds set up against Real in the quarter-finals with an energetic midfield that looked to break fast.

Only, they didn’t do that. Real picked them apart quite easily and without ever pushing up.

Toni Kroos and Luka Modric were happy to spray long balls over the top of Liverpool’s backline. The Reds didn’t press hard enough, nor did their defenders cover those passes adequately.

The result was Real sitting deep, denying space, and hitting on the counter. Exactly what Chelsea ended up doing to them, in other words.

And that’s all the evidence Liverpool needed that they just weren’t good enough. The plan was right, they even had the right players to enact it – the team just didn’t deliver.

Now, we feel quite certain that Liverpool would have progressed if Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez had been at the back. They may even have got through simply by having Jordan Henderson in midfield.

All three missing, however, completely ruined the gameplan. This was an opportunity to get into the semis but injuries took that chance away.

So Liverpool must fix it next season. They’ve got to build on their squad to ensure injuries can’t hit this hard again. They’ve also got to keep the core of this group together for at least one more year.

Because there is clearly a chance for more glory, here, and certainly in Europe. Liverpool had yet another Champions League semi-finals within their reach, if not for injuries.

There’s no reason to worry about the style or the system – Chelsea proved that – they’ve just got to make sure the squad doesn’t miss absentees as much next season.