Champions League Round of 16 - Real Held in Moscow, Napoli's Blue Crush

Here are some of my thoughts on tonight’s two Champions League matches…

Real Madrid @ CSKA Moscow (first leg: 1-1)

Although Real conceded a goal to 25-year-old Sweden international Pontus Wernbloom (who has arguably one of the better names in football) at the death, this has to be viewed as a positive result for the nine-time European champions.

Jose Mourinho’s men took the lead in the 28^th minute after CSKA’s horrible attempt at clearing the ball, which allowed Cristiano Ronaldo—who else?—to find the back of the net with a well struck shot off his weak foot that beat goalkeeper Sergei Chepchugov, who was forced to stand on his head more than once in Moscow tonight.

Mourinho supporters will remember his Inter squad that came to the Luzhniki Stadium two years ago up 1-0 on aggregate after the first leg of the 2009-10 Champions League quarter-finals, and doubling their lead before advancing to the semi-finals—en route to their historic treble-winning season—thanks to a lucky Wesley Sneijder strike. Inter did not concede a goal over their tie with CSKA that year, and while Real already have thanks to the Swede’s late-game heroics (something CSKA has shown a real affinity for in Europe’s premier tournament in recent years, actually), don’t expect them to do so in the return leg three weeks from tomorrow. However slim the Russian side’s chances are of pulling off a miracle at the Bernabeu, though, CSKA boss Leonid Slutsky should be extremely proud of his club’s hard-fought effort tonight against superior opposition in front of just over 70,000 spectators.

Real Madrid currently sit a whopping ten points ahead of Barcelona atop La Liga, and will surely move on to this year’s Champions League quarter-finals, but you start to get the feeling that a double-winning season will have an air of incompleteness about it unless the club proves that it can defeat Barcelona…like that’s ever going to happen.

 Chelsea @ Napoli (first leg: 3-1 Napoli)

This one, for whatever reason, reminded me a lot of this year’s Super Bowl. I am not a New England fan—and never will be—but I know that the vast majority of my friends who are told me they weren’t the least bit surprised when their precious Patriots fell to the Giants (again).

I am, however, a Chelsea fan, and sadly, I share the same sentiments of my New England adversaries tonight.

This result was to be expected, was it not? The horrid run Chelsea has been on. Their highly questionable backline. The fact that Napoli is just a hungrier club at the moment. All three of these factors—and surely dozens more—conspired and brought down the mighty Blues in southern Italy this evening, and once again put a giant dent in their Champions League title hopes. But it was all too predictable.

The only thing that really surprised me was the fact that over 82% of people who had submitted a pick for the match on ESPN.com’s Streak for the Cash had elected a Chelsea win over a Napoli win…or draw (I chose the latter and can now boast a proud two-game winning streak with eight days left in the month).

Clearly these people hadn’t been paying attention to how Chelsea actually plies their trade these days.

The team is completely different than in years past, and it is becoming more and more evident with each passing fixture just how clueless, helpless, and unsuited manager Andre Villas-Boas is for his current post.

The backline acted almost as a parody of itself with David Luiz leading the way committing his usual comedy of errors, all of which contributed to the three Napoli goals. Chelsea created some chances, but they looked like a dispirited bunch for much of the night, quite the contrary to what we’ve all grown so accustomed to seeing over the past half decade. The most egregious act of the evening, however, was found on AVB’s lineup card.

Why Michael Essien, Ashley Cole, and Frank Lampard—three Chelsea legends who have enjoyed unparalleled success in Europe compared to most of their teammates—were all left out of the starting XI for what was obviously the club’s most important match of the season yet is both baffling and downright inexcusable.

It’s almost as if AVB is trying to get sacked. He is on thin ice as it is—that is no secret—and there’s no telling when that ice might finally crack, but if the Portuguese is still around in three weeks for the return leg at Stamford Bridge and still wants to keep his job, he will put his grand, revolutionary plans aside for 90 minutes and give the club a fresh injection of veteran experience (an oxy-moron if I ever heard one) and leadership and hope for the best. That means starting Essien and Lampard, Drogba and Torres (Yes. Together.), and maybe even Salomon Kalou. Chelsea is not the formidable European side they’ve been in years past, but they’ve scored more than a couple goals at home before. Maybe a desperate, last-second return to the club’s golden era can salvage a Champions League campaign that may have already reached yet another abrupt and premature ending. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I almost miss Nicolas Anelka…almost.

A quick word on Napoli: their front three of Ezequiel Lavezzi, Marek Hamsik, and the ferociously indomitable Edinson Cavani is as good as they come. The trio talked the talk before Tuesday night’s showdown, and then more than walked the walk tonight in the chances they both created and converted. An Argentine, a Slovak, and a Uruguayan, it turns out, form a perfect triangle.

AVB - We Hardly Knew Thee?

It was a simple question directed to Andre Villas-Boas at a recent press conference in the week leading up to Chelsea’s FA Cup Fifth Round tie against Birmingham on Sunday:

“How strong is the desire within the squad now to win either the FA Cup or the Champions League given that you aren’t going to win the [Premiership]?”

Football managers are bombarded by these types of questions on an almost daily basis during any one season, so much so in fact that it becomes easier and easier to predict the coach’s response as the year rolls on. If you had asked me to forecast Villas-Boas’ response to this particular query, I probably would have guessed that he’d say something like this:

“The team is still training hard. It is February. The Premiership is not over until May. We will continue to work hard and try to win all that we can before the end of the season.”

An answer like this is as obvious (and as trite) as they come when faced with this type of questioning. This member of the press—he’s certainly not alone though—had clearly written off Chelsea’s chances of winning the Premier League, and was inquiring to determine the level of the club’s overall ambition in said tournaments, stirring the proverbial pot, which is the job of journalists and commentators alike.

The manager’s job, of course, is to then deflect and ward off these oncoming questions and assertions by retorting in a way that will not only refute these claims, but that will also re-instill a sense of hope and optimism into not only the club, but its supporters as well. It is, once again, the obvious thing for a manager to do.

But Villas-Boas is unlike most managers, and not solely because of his precocious pedigree. No, AVB’s ever-increasing frustration at Stamford Bridge has been well-documented in the eight months since he joined Chelsea back in June, and following a particularly dismal run of form that has seen the Blues go winless since January 28, there has been nary a smile to be seen on the manager’s face for weeks.

So when Villas-Boas was asked the aforementioned question, instead of replying rather banally but positively, he glared at the inquirer and might as well have brandished a small white flag in lieu of his crestfallen, but candid, response:

“Not as strong as before,” he conceded.

AVB could have said Chelsea isn’t finished yet. He could have said we’re still alive in two hugely important tournaments that we think we can win. He could have said we still have loads more quality than most teams in these tournaments.

He could have said all these things and more in a last-ditch effort to reinvigorate the squad and its fan base and, in so doing, give everyone in West London a little boost of hope.

But he didn’t. It wouldn’t have been genuine, and it wouldn’t have been the truth.

The truth is that Chelsea are in shambles. The last time they won a match came three weeks ago in an unconvincing 1-0 victory over QPR in the FA Cup Fourth Round, and the last time they won a Premiership match was another pallid 1-0 triumph against Sunderland over a month ago on January 14. Since, they have lost just once (a 2-0 drubbing away to Everton) but were unable to score against Norwich, blew a 3-0 second half lead at home to Manchester United, and were nearly knocked out of the FA Cup at home to Birmingham on Sunday. It doesn’t help that the club will travel to Napoli next to take on the club nobody wants to play in tomorrow’s first leg of the Champions League’s round of 16.

There are rumors swirling about that the Chelsea players have lost faith in Villas-Boas and AVB’s aforesaid comments do little to dispel those rumblings. And it is no secret that if this unacceptable run of form continues, Villas-Boas could soon be packing his bags before his revolutionary project is barely underway.

There have been a few players who have come to AVB’s defense such as striker Didier Drogba. But with the Ivory Coast international’s contract expiring at season’s end and there being little speculation of its renewal, how difficult must it have been for Drogba to publicly back his manager? Especially when you consider the fact that he had been away at the Africa Cup of Nations for the last month, which has proven to be—perhaps not coincidentally—the most tumultuous chapter of Chelsea’s season thus far.

Perhaps Chelsea hired the wrong man for the job when they signed Villas-Boas as manager.

Perhaps the 34-year-old needed more time to develop in an authoritative roll, despite winning the treble with Porto last season.

Perhaps Chelsea saw a little too much of Mourinho in AVB, though results—not to mention overall demeanor—in each Portuguese’ first season at Stamford Bridge have clearly shown they are not as similar as some might have originally believed them to be.

Or perhaps the real problem here is the culture of impatience that has been created at the club by owner Roman Abramovich. Not including Mourinho, who left Chelsea by mutual consent in the fall of 2007, the Blues have had five different managers since the Special One’s departure, and only one of them (Carlo Ancelotti) has lasted longer than one season in charge. It has reached a point where being fired by Abramovich has become almost a rite of passage for Chelsea managers and Villas-Boas surely realizes his days in West London could very well be numbered if results don’t improve. The players undoubtedly realize this, too, and it is they, perhaps more so now than the manager, who have the power to control those results.

Villas-Boas can breathe a momentary sigh of relief now that Guus Hiddink—an Abramovich favorite—has inked a new contract to manage Russian side Anzhi Makhachkala. But the manager’s career at Chelsea will undeniably be on the line against Napoli.

Should the Blues advance, AVB may yet retain his job. It will, of course, depend on how much farther he can push his ageing side in football’s prize tournament. Should the Blues fail to progress (and following Arsenal’s recent performance in Italy, it doesn’t look promising), however, AVB will surely be shown the exit and make way for the next dead manager walking at Stamford Bridge.

So it will all come down to tomorrow (and then in the return leg on March 14—if AVB survives that long, and if the thrashing in the first leg isn’t too severe, that is) against Napoli for Andre Villas-Boas. Will his discontented squad rise out of the ashes and put on a clinical, vintage Chelsea performance in Tuesday’s first leg that will give the club a fighting chance to survive? Or will they continue to play uninspired football and keep looking over their shoulders for a new boss in whom they can trust and believe to suddenly appear?

It will be up to AVB. But, it will also be up to his team.