One thing any serious commentator won't do is to judge the game at the Olympic Stadium by the score-line. Without a doubt, 3-2 flatters the Germans. By the time they scored their last two in the 89th and 94th minute, the tie was effectively over. Chelsea went to sleep a little knowing Bayern needed four goals (after Drogba's 80th minute header) to knock them out. And, of course, needing no invitation, the Germans enterprisingly and somewhat luckily got two goals thereafter (to make a total of three), thus winning the battle, but losing the war.

Personally, I wasn't happy with Chelsea letting in three goals for the first time this season, no matter that it wouldn't have been so if something was at stake at that late stage of the game. I think Mourinho and his team must let the boys know that such scandalously shoddy performance in the last five minutes cannot be condoned. It simply shouldn't happen again. Great teams don't switch off at any point in time in any match until the final whistle.

Not surprisingly, the game started very nervously for Chelsea. Though I wasn't surprised to find the back four positions manned by central defenders, I was expecting Glen Johnson -- a natural right-back -- to start the game at least. Bayern tormented Chelsea from the right repeatedly (with Carvalho and Huth struggling to contain the Ze Roberto and Pizarro combo) that it took Cech's alertness to save Chelsea's blushes in the 4th minute. He did very well to stay on his feet to block Pizarro's effort after a Ze Roberto's cross found the striker in the area.

By the 8th minute, Bayern settled on a complementary idea, which was to effectively take Drogba out of the game. And the man sent out to do this piece of dirty business was Kovac, whose blatant assault on Drogba's knees took the wind out of the Chelsea man, who then had to be carried off to the touchline writhing in pain. As he spent the next 10-15 minutes thereafter hobbling around, Chelsea continued to be under the cosh. The industrious Schweinsteiger made a run into the Chelsea box that had the defence all over the place. He passed the ball in between Gallas's legs, ghosted past John Terry, but chose to take a poor shot that flew across the face of the Chelsea goal. Though Petr Cech's positioning may well have helped to influence his wrong choice, cutting it back into the box where two or three Bayern bodies were lurking would have been the better idea. In fact, they were so much on the attack that the only real Chelsea effort forward before the 20th minute I can recall was a Joe Cole charge into the German box, which ultimately was thwarted by their defence.

But soon after Makelele began to impose some kind of discipline in the middle (after an initially unsuccessful attempt to contain Ballack) as a basis for Chelsea moving forward. They soon won a free-kick on the Bayern left, a few yards outside the area, but Huth ballooned his shot well over the bar. Chelsea kept at it and in the 29th minute, the ball came from the German right via Joe Cole to Lampard whose shot shaved the inside of the serially unfortunate Lucio's right leg, deflecting it into the left side of his own net, away from Kahn who was already committed to his right! You could say this was against the run of play, but really it was a case of Chelsea taking their chances with another hint of luck.

The Germans momentarily lost their head after the goal, but resumed normal service soon after. The 32nd minute saw a Schweinsteiger shot parried away by Cech for a corner. They then orchestrated another beautiful move that caught our defence napping, but Ballack's otherwise good cut-back found no one with the Chelsea net invitingly open! With Carvalho making an awkward clearance for yet another corner and Robert Huth's header of a clearance finding Ballack (who then contrived to send the ball over the bar) it was clear that the rattled Chelsea defence was simply hanging on till half-time. Even a long ball that found Drogba well onside with only Oliver Kahn to beat was expertly taken away from him by the backtracking Kovac. It was clear from Drogba's movement with the ball that he was yet to recover from the knock he received from the former some 35 minutes earlier.

Chelsea's game-plan in the first part of second half was to defend in packs and send in the 'sophisticated long ball' repeatedly to Drogba when they have the chance, with the hope that he would spring the German offside trap and find the net. The German response was to send in the much more attack-minded Scholl for the much-hyped Demichelis who found the going very tough. Drogba then tried a mazy run which was again aborted in the German box. After that, again Chelsea went into a phase of dangerous funnelling. Indeed, the highlight of the match in the first 10-15 minutes of the second half (from the Chelsea perspective that is) was Joe Cole's hat-trick of crucial tackles against the threatening Ze Roberto in vital areas on the Chelsea right. Even while defending as a unit, Chelsea's organization and space protection and management was superb. There were no silly challenges and they even had the presence of mind to try another attacking move which found Duff face to face with Kahn who made a top-notch point-blank deflection of Duff's shot for a corner.

Though Chelsea stuck to their plan, the Duff attempt only served as a wake-up call for the Germans. They knew they had to try something else with only thirty minutes of the game remaining. How ironic that it was a version of the long ball from Sagnol, helped along by a Ballack header, which finally undid Chelsea. Cech did brilliantly to get a hand on the header, but it bounced off the inside of the post and then to Pizarro who simply tapped it into the Chelsea net from close range. This goal lifted the Germans who were now beginning to put Chelsea under the most intense of pressures. Huth's flailing attempt to head away a dangerous ball hit his own crossbar with Cech out of position and the resulting corner had Gudjohnsen clearing the ball off the line!

The 70th minute saw Tiago replace a clearly jaded Duff. The Germans responded immediately by bringing in Guerrero for the very anonymous Makaay and 6 minutes later, Salihamidzic replaced Lizarazu. By this time, nothing existed of the Chelsea attack; in fact, it seemed the idea was to simply wind down the clock by trying to hold on to the ball as much as possible or use some creative delay tactics when the ball got out of touch for a throw-in or anything of the sort. Yet, it was while perfecting this plan that the ball found Joe Cole on the right of the German goal, two or three feet from the corner flag. First, he was about to do the run-down-the-clock routine after killing the ball when he looked up and found Drogba in the German box with only one defender shadowing him. He dropped the ball for the big man whose glancing header found the left of the despairing Kahn and into the corner! It proved to be the most important goal of the night as it was the 80th minute and Chelsea were leading 6-3 on aggregate. As Drogba celebrated with his version of the multiple military salute in front of the travelling fans, Bayern supporters were trooping to the exit in droves. Good night Munich!

But the sense of security Chelsea were bathing in was soon to be threatened by the Germans. Chelsea made the mistake of momentarily forgetting that they were playing the Germans, the masters of the art of the impossible. Fair enough, Chelsea made an apparently sensible change by removing the already-carded Gudjohnsen for Geremi in the 87th minute, but 2 minutes later, the Germans had the ball in the Chelsea net for their equalizing goal when the ever-lively Schweinsteiger found Guerrero who found the net. Again, Chelsea's response was to bring in the relatively inexperienced Nuno Morais in the 91st minute to replace Cole. After another nervy slice by Huth for a Bayern corner, Scholl popped up with a brilliant shot to give the Germans the lead in the 94th minute! Luckily, there was barely enough time to restart before Chelsea heard, with relief, the final whistle.

In conclusion, while I do not doubt the fact that the score-line and application in the last minutes would have been different if Drogba hadn't more or less made the game safe with his goal, I believe that things would have been quite different still if Jose were on the bench. There is no way he would have allowed any team to put three past us, whether or not anything was at stake. I believe he wouldn't have made at least two of those substitutions (Geremi and Morais) even with us seemingly safe. He knows we aren't playing domestically for some time so the boys needn't have been substituted or saved for the next game. As I said at the beginning, Chelsea need to work on this last-minute over-confidence/lack of concentration bit of this game well before our next match, whether domestically or in Europe. To let this dangerous attitude creep into our game this late in the season is to undo all the good work of before. I know we have some sort of defensive crisis right now; but I do not see this as a valid excuse to let in two goals in a space of five dying minutes and lose such an important European match by the odd goal. Okay, we are in the semis and we are happy; but we should be smarter as well.

Therefore, it's with relief I personally welcome the Special One back to the bench.

Congratulations to the boys and every Chelsea fan out there. We're still living the dream because we've never stopped believing. So, keep believing people! Keep believing till the very end!

C'mon Chelsea!

by Kenn Emetulu

*Related links:*

* Anxious wait for Terry X-ray * Germans salute the supremacy of Drogba * UEFA told Faria to take off woolly hat * Semi-final Chelsea home and happy * Terry sets tone for Chelsea's resilience * Powerless Mourinho on a perilous road * Gudjohnsen keen to seal title ahead of Euro summit * Gallas galled by time on left * Defiant Liverpool dig deep to set up Chelsea showdown