Whatever happens next at Chelsea, there is a clear priority: keep Tuchel

At 9.50pm on Tuesday Chelsea’s players gathered on the Bernabéu touchline to prepare for extra time, having just beaten Real Madrid 3-1 in their own stadium over 90 minutes: a sensational result in isolation, but with a tinge of dread now too, a sense of having run themselves to a state of exhaustion in pursuit of a retreating mirage.

Rodrygo’s goal 10 minutes from the end of normal time will be remembered for Luka Modric’s sublime diagonal pass, a weird, snaking, dipping thing, like an entity from some other physical plane. But the effect of that goal on the opposition was also striking.

There was still time for Thomas Tuchel to send on Christian Pulisic, and for Pulisic to miss the chance at the death that would have rescripted in an instant every version of this extraordinary game, recast Madrid’s dynastic will to power as decadent amour-propre, altered the trajectory of seasons and careers, and anointed Tuchel once and for all as the great tactical white whale of west London.

The difference with Madrid, however, the big secret, is that they tend to take those moments.

And so half an hour of suffering beckoned. But the break was also box office in its own right. Antonio Rüdiger barked and slapped shoulders. For a while two middle-aged men in club tracksuits crouched behind Reece James and pounded furiously at his buttocks – vital work, so vital in fact that a third man briefly came and joined them.

In the middle of this Tuchel gathered his players in a tight circle and delivered a fluent two-minute speech, hands scything the air, skipping from foot to foot, replicating even in the gawky physicality of his pep talk the movements, the shapes, the concussive texture of his team’s performance.

With a day’s grace, and even