Chelsea’s season now hinges on an FA Cup tie at Everton on Saturday. Actually, scrap that. Chelsea’s season now is an FA Cup tie at Everton on Saturday.
Lose that, and it is over. Done with a quarter of the domestic campaign remaining. Lose that, and one of the joys of next season will be lost, too. European competition.
This result means Chelsea will not compete in the next edition of the Champions League, and even Europa League qualification hangs by a thread. Basically, they will need to win the FA Cup. Equally, they will need to be better than this.
Chelsea matched Paris Saint-Germain for energy in the first half, but lost their way in the second. A calf injury to Diego Costa which took him out of the game after 60 minutes was a blow, but Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s winner seven minutes later finished them.
Ultimately, they were not in PSG’s class over two legs. Needing to win 1-0 here they were not, for a solitary second, ahead and trailed twice.
While PSG’s stellar names — Ibrahimovic, Angel di Maria — rose to the occasion, Chelsea’s disappointed, as they have done for much of the season. Cesc Fabregas was anonymous and at times simply overwhelmed, Pedro was loose and if Eden Hazard was hoping to play his way into PSG’s thoughts he might need to say it with flowers. He limped off here after 77 minutes to a smattering of boos from Chelsea followers who were beginning to recall the first six months of the season.
If Chelsea could chuck it then, as champions, heaven knows what will happen if Saturday does bring the curtain down on the competitive campaign. These do not look like players much concerned with playing for pride. If they were, they would not be in this mess.
The folly of those wilderness months is now becoming very real for Guus Hiddink’s side, with three down and one to go, and to be beaten soundly home and away in this competition will have been another sobering experience. In 2012, a Chelsea team who finished sixth in the Premier League somehow rallied to pull off an unlikely Champions League triumph, but there was scant prospect of a repeat here. Chelsea may have started playing in the second half of this season but they fell very short on Wednesday night.
They were behind after 16 minutes, level, then finished off with 23 minutes remaining — Ibrahimovic’s goal leaving them needing three more in normal time.
Ibrahimovic is being touted around English clubs, and some may be tempted after this. Plainly, he is looking for a final payday in Europe at 34, but even in his twilight years he remains quite the handful. He made the first goal, and scored the second — even if Di Maria’s cross was so perfect that, from a bath chair in his dotage 40 years from now, a striker of Ibrahimovic’s class could probably have nailed it.
Di Maria’s poor year at Manchester United looks an even greater mystery after this performance. He was excellent, in a way that his Chelsea equivalents simply were not. A big player seizing a big occasion. Chelsea have not done that against top-class European opposition for a while.
For the winner, played in by Thiago Motta, Di Maria’s left-side cross for Ibrahimovic was perfection, the striker converting from four yards without needing to break stride. He celebrated in front of the boisterous PSG end as if the match was over, which it was. Stamford Bridge fell silent, and a little resentful. By the end, the march for the exits was evident. They had seen enough.
The game played out at half-pace, a contrast to the vibrant first half. Indeed, if the opening 45 minutes had got any faster they would have needed to test it for the stuff Maria Sharapova was on.
So much for continental sides being intimidated by the pace of the Premier League. PSG set off like rockets and dared Chelsea to chase them. Eventually, Chelsea did. And so the game evolved at breakneck pace, both teams covering over 50 kilometres of turf before half-time, much of it at a sprint.
There was little time to think, let alone pick out a pass, and some of the tackling was furious.
European ties used to be slow burning chess-like encounters, cagey and cautious at the start, as players probed for an opening. Now, it is hammer and tongs. There is so much skill on display, such cavalier concern for defensive solidity, that risks are taken from the kick-off.