A withering counterattack from Karim Adeyemi, just as Chelsea had its best moment, and the stops of goalkeeper Gregor Kobel gave Borussia Dortmund a 1-0 victory in the first leg of the knockout stages of the Champions League.
After a balanced first half Chelsea came out in an abrasive plan in the second but was punished, with the counterattack of Adeyemi, and crashed again and again with Kobel whose last stop was in the 95, before a shot by Enzo Fernández.
In the first two minutes of the game there was already a good approach to the Dortmund area followed by a Chelsea counterattack that ended with a sweep in the area of Nico Schlotterbeck before Mudryk.
The two opening scenes heralded much of what would be the first half.
Dortmund were looking to arrive in a controlled way, with Julian Brandt and Jude Bellighman pulling the strings, while Chelsea showed quick transitions that used to involve Joao Felix and Mudryk.
Throughout the first half Dortmund had more arrivals and more shots on goal but the best opportunity was Chelsea, with a shot by Joao Felix, who crashed against the crossbar in the 38th minute.
Joao Felix had had another, in the 32nd, when he had finished over from a good position.
Dortmund also had some shots from a good position and several area situations that they could have made more of.
After a first half that had been quite balanced, Chelsea came out in dominating plan in the second half and had more than a quarter of an hour in which they had Dortmund against the wall.
In that phase Chelsea had two good chances, one from Thiago Solve’s foul in the 55th and another in the 62nd with a point-blank shot from James to which Gregor Kobel reacted with a great stop sending the ball to corner.
From the corner kick, and at the moment when Chelsea played best, came the counterattack that ended in Dortmund’s goal.
Raphael Guerreiro took the ball out of the area and Karim Adeyemi traveled almost the entire field in speed, arriving in the area left in the way to Enzo Fernández and, already in the area, to Kepa to score on goal.
After the goal there was a phase in which the pressure of Chelsea subsided a little but then returned and Kobel reappeared several times, in the 78 against Coulibaly who finished at point-blank range and at the last moment with an acrobatic stop against Enzo Fernández.
The tie is still open with the narrow result, but Dortmund continues to count its matches for victories this year while Chelsea are not given the results.
Benfica sinks Brugge
EFE/EPA/Stephanie Lecocq
Benfica Lisbon, unstoppable in the Portuguese league, confirmed its role as favorite in the knockout stages of the Champions League against Brugge by winning its visit to the Jan-Breydel Stadium (0-2) with goals from Joao Mario and David Neres that deepen the bad run of the Flemish team.
Two goals at the beginning and end of the second half caused by two naïve defensive errors were enough for the Portuguese led by German Roger Schmidt to treasure a victory that puts them with one foot in the quarterfinals.
The result that greatly complicates the aspirations of Brugge in their first knockout stages of the Champions League since the 1990-1991 campaign.
In a first half without owner or goals, in which the initial dominance of Brugge was diluted, the incursions of the Canadian Tajon Buchanan for the Belgians and the aerial game of the Argentine central Nicolás Otamendi for the Portuguese put the danger.
The locals went to the dressing room with a goal canceled on the edge of the break for offside to Ghanaian Dennis Odoi to finish a free kick thrown by the Dutchman Noa Lang.
But as soon as the second half began, Benfica went ahead thanks to a clumsy penalty from Welshman Jack Henry on Goncalo Ramos that transformed Joao Mario, adding his fifth goal in “Champions” this season and the fourth penalty.
The English coach of Bruges, Scott Parker, who replaced the dismissed Carl Hoefkens in January and is not getting results, moved the bench to the desperate and reappeared the Spaniard Ferran Jutglà, who had been injured and jumped on the field in place of Ghanaian Kamal Sowah in the 79th minute.
But it was of little use. The Portuguese “eagles” tied the victory and consolidated the three points with a second goal in the 88th minute from David Neres after taking advantage of another error, this time in a control of the Dutchman Bjorn Meijer.
Benfica, champion of the maximum compeEuropean club ties in 1961 and 1961, confirmed that he is going through a sweet moment, even after losing in January players of the stature of the Argentine Enzo Fernández, transferred to Chelsea for 121 million euros.
The Bruges, who signed a brilliant start to the season but went into a tailspin in autumn and still do not find sensations or results.
Now he will have to conjure himself to achieve a difficult comeback on March 7 in Lisbon and cling to a competition in which he trusted to redirect the season, after having been eliminated in the Belgian Cup and being fourth in the league championship.
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