Reece James stands out as Chelsea era ends in honourable defeat

How do you kill that which cannot be killed? Sanctioned, escrowed, hawked about the place like a bag of meat in a country pub: but still that self-fuelling, indissoluble substance that is Chelsea Football Club continued to roll along on an extraordinary night at the Bernabéu.

There was defeat with honour for Chelsea here, a 3-2 win over 120 thrilling gruelling, relentlessly high craft minutes that translated into a 5-4 loss on aggregate. But the numbers hardly told the story, on an evening that felt also like a kind of farewell, a Viking funeral for an undeniably glorious part of this club’s history.

It seemed fitting Chelsea’s three starting academy players were among the stars. Mason Mount was teak-tough, whip-smart and a relentless pest for Madrid’s midfield. Ruben Loftus-Cheek ran himself into the ground.

But the real heart of Chelsea’s act of resisting to the fates was Reece James, whose defensive performance in the Bernabéu was jaw-droppingly fine, so good that Chelsea’s main concern now must be a business plan convincing enough to keep him on the staff.

James spent eighty minutes on a yellow, but kept following Vinícius Jr, bogging him down, dogging his steps. Deep into the second half he preserved Chelsea’s lead with a precision piece of micro-surgery defending, defending on the nanobot scale, picking the ball off Karim Benzema’s toe from just behind him with the scalpel point of his toe.

On the ball he kept coming forward. When he didn’t have it he simply stood, socks down, and glowered, or prowled or stalked. John Terry had a more theatrical leadership pheromone. James just carries it with him.

Madrid had been in imperial mood from late afternoon, the city illuminated by an electrical storm, streets around the