Chelsea have history on their side in bid to topple Barcelona
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Updated 20/02/2018 at 00:38 GMT
With the Barcelona double-header kicking off this week, Dan Levene looks at a Chelsea fixture that has never been without incident in modern times.
Frank Lampard runs towards Chelsea FC team-mate Fernando Torres (L) as he celebrates after scoring the second goal for their team during the UEFA Champions League Semi Final, second leg match between FC Barcelona and Chelsea FC at Camp Nou in 2012.
Image credit: Eurosport
“There are occasions when it pays better to fight and be beaten than not to fight at all,” wrote George Orwell in his Homage to Catalonia. Chelsea coach Antonio Conte should invoke the spirit of such sentiments as he seeks to build a fresh European dynasty against a time-honoured rival from Catalonia. Orwell was speaking of the Spanish Civil War: a conflict of ideologies which cost an untold lives, and cast as great a scar across Barcelona as any city.
But with the history of the La Liga champions and their home city linked no more closely than in that three-year conflict, the message in Orwell's words has stood the test of time.
A bit like Chelsea's ongoing duel with Barca that has been 52 years in the making.
Chelsea v Barcelona has taken on something of a mythical status in recent times, as football battles go. And, as Chelsea know to both their benefit and their cost, the strength of their fight doesn't always correlate with the positivity of the outcome.
With the degree to which the tie has come to epitomise the modern Champions League, it is easy to forget that these sides first met some months before England became world champions.
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Olivier Giroud is embraced by Ethan Ampadu of Chelsea during a training session at Chelsea Training Ground on February 19, 2018 in Cobham.
Image credit: Eurosport
After 2-0 wins for the home side at both Camp Nou and then Stamford Bridge, nobody was quite sure what the rulebook held in the 1966 Fairs Cup.
There was no such thing as a penalty shootout or even replay: and the foes returned for what was termed a 'tie-breaker', with Barcelona romping 5-0 in front of their own crowd.
It was 34 years, and the arrival of Chelsea's first entry into the Champions League proper, before hostilities were resumed.
Since their first meeting in football's premier club competition in 2000, Chelsea have enjoyed four wins and five draws against Barca while suffering three defeats. Against a traditionally more fabled and fancied foe, history suggests Chelsea need not fear these dust-ups.
A 3-1 win in London set things up for Gianluca Vialli's team 18 years ago. But things went awry a fortnight later: as the tie was taken to extra time by a Pep Guardiola set-piece which found Dani, then the back of the net.
A penalty by Rivaldo (who had missed one towards the end of normal time), and a Patrick Kluivert header, saw Chelsea dumped out by a 5-1 scoreline which, on the night, did their battling performance no justice.
The knock-out stages in 2005 brought the first seriously contentious refereeing performance: with Anders Frisk dismissing Didier Drogba for a seemingly innocuous challenge on 'keeper Victor Valdes.
With Chelsea leading at the time, through a Juliano Belletti own goal (remember him?), the one-man advantage paid dividends to their hosts: who took a 2-1 lead to Stamford Bridge.
The scandal which followed ensured the referee choice for the return leg would be keenly scrutinised: thus, UEFA plumped for the unimpeachable Pierluigi Collina. And what followed remains one of the greatest games SW6 has ever hosted.
Chelsea were three-up on the night within 20 minutes - through Eidur Gudjohnsen, Frank Lampard and Damien Duff – thanks to some incredibly paced destruction of the Barcelona defence.
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Jose Mourinho, the Chelsea manager, celebrates victory at the end of the UEFA Champions League, First Knockout Round, Second Leg match between Chelsea and Barcelona at Stamford Bridge on March 8, 2005.
Image credit: Eurosport
The tie continued in its see-saw nature thanks to two from Ronaldinho before the break: one a penalty, the other a shot from the edge of the box without backlift, which probably no other person alive could have scored.
But captain John Terry's header, with just under a quarter hour to go, ensured the celebrations carried on long into the night in west London.
That was the start of what became an almost annual clash, which would go on to be the centrepiece of a new rivalry that runs deep on both sides.
In the 2006 edition, Asier Del Horno's lunge at Lionel Messi led to a red card which few could complain about, and cost Jose Mourinho's side a 2-1 home deficit from a leading position. Barcelona only needed a draw at Camp Nou, and that's what they got.
Two group stages games later that year ended in a 2-2 draw away, and 1-0 win at home for Blues.
Tom Henning Ovrebo's name will be well known to almost all reading this, thanks to his role in the 2009 semi final.
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FOOTBALL Chelsea's Michael Ballack screams at referee Tom Henning Ovrebo after Overbo ruled out a possible handball by Barcelona during their Champions League second leg semi-final
Image credit: Reuters
His part in Chelsea's away goals exit, which he later put down to an off-night, was given it's own commentary by Drogba – whose expletives direct to camera earned him a lengthy ban.
And so to the most recent meeting. Blues arrived in Catalonia in 2012, with a 1-0 Drogba lead.
They then conceded two, and lost their totemic leader Terry before the first half was out.
If ever there was a time to fight and be beaten, or not fight at all: this was it.
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Andres Iniesta sinks Chelsea in 2009.
Image credit: Getty Images
First Ramires, then Fernando Torres – and the deal was done. Chelsea had overcome perhaps their greatest odds ever to reach the final (and there were even steeper odds yet to come).
Football is not war. Regardless of what some have said, it is thankfully rarely a matter of life and death.
For Conte's Chelsea, in this mini-battle, the odds are stacked against the London side once more. But they would do well to remember those wards from Orwell, and how they have served their predecessors in blue.
Dan Levene on Twitter @danlevene
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