Chelsea invested in three winter reinforcements in the starting XI, with Enzo Fernández, João Félix and Mykhaylo Mudrik among Graham Potter’s bets, pressured by an eight-match run in which he added just one triumph. But the recipe did not work and the Londoners lost in Germany to Borussia Dortmund in the first leg of the round of 16 of the Champions League.
Of the trio of reinforcements, the Argentine midfielder was more exposed given the flow of play generated by Borussia Dortmund, but it was the Portuguese loaned by Atlético de Madrid that quickly gained prominence. First of all, for the way he made the English attack flow, enhancing all the incursions.
OH FELIX ?? It was beautiful if you entered ?????
?? @ChampionsLeague | @BVB 0 x 0 @ChelseaFC #ChampionsELEVEN pic.twitter.com/zvdhE2BU03
— ELEVEN Portugal (@ElevenSports_PT) February 15, 2023
Félix solved practically all the problems with a disconcerting ease, having been millimeters away from being happy in two moments that could have been crucial to score the first half: After a clever shot, in which he tried to put the ball too far out of the reach of the goalkeeper, Félix hit the crossbar with Chelsea’s best opportunity, an emblem that had already seen a goal well disallowed by Thiago Silva.
Borussia Dortmund, with another Portuguese, Raphaël Guerreiro, in action, controlled the rhythm, pushing the “blues”, betting on a 4x1x4x1 that both created constraints for Chelsea and exposed its most backward sector too much, reduced to three units in the construction phase.
It was worth the intermittence of Mudryk, who both started unstoppably towards the area and, right after, boycotted his own effort with actions without connection. Owners and lords of the ball, the Germans built enough goalscoring moments to get ahead on the scoreboard, especially through Karim Adeyemi and Sébastien Haller.
The effectiveness of the two teams was clearly conditioned by greed and the emergency to score first, which led Signal Iduna Park to wait 63 minutes for Adeyemi’s explosion. Expectations fully compensated for by the 21-year-old German international’s impressive run in response to a losing Chelsea double.
ADEYEMI ?? Enzo well tried to run after him ??
?? @ChampionsLeague | @BVB 1 x 0 @ChelseaFC #ChampionsELEVEN pic.twitter.com/Lre1QQQqlw
— ELEVEN Portugal (@ElevenSports_PT) February 15, 2023
Chelsea reacted, who saw Emre Can avoid a tie on top of the line after Koulibaly’s shot and Kobel’s incomplete save 12 minutes from 90 minutes. The Londoners tried everything in a game of pure vertigo, which ended with Borussia defending the minimum advantage .