Tuchel and Chelsea nearly pulled off a miracle at Bernabeu but future looks less clear

Antonio Rudiger stood with head in hands, looking at the celebrating Real Madrid fans and players in the Bernabeu. An epic Champions League tie had revolved around plenty of players, but him more than most. He had scored Chelsea’s second goal of an improbably superb comeback in Spain, but lost his footing when Karim Benzema delivered the ultimately decisive goal.

Rudiger had been arguably the outstanding defender of the Champions League’s knockout stages last season, when Chelsea conceded just two goals, one of them so late to be irrelevant.

Now Real scored five in 210 minutes: two from mistakes – the most grievous Edouard Mendy’s underhit pass, aimed for Rudiger, when Benzema completed his first-leg hat-trick at Stamford Bridge – but three from brilliance.

The genius of Luka Modric, with his wonderful, outside-of-the-boot pass for Rodrygo, just when Chelsea seemed to have completed one of the greatest recoveries in European Cup history, was transformative.

So was Benzema, with four goals over the two legs. And if there is something timeless about Real’s ability to conjure results in Europe, the same might be said about their two talismen, with a combined age in their seventies.

Perhaps they underlined a difference. Modric and Benzema rank among the top half-dozen players on the planet; there is a case for anointing the Frenchman the best right now. Chelsea have no such counterpart, no genuine Galactico. Instead, they relied on formidable organisation and teamwork.

They conquered the continent last season with a formula based on frugality, a low-scoring team with no Benzema equivalent. Romelu Lukaku was supposed to provide such a potent finisher but he missed chances in the first leg and missed the second leg. It summed