Can one yellow card really change the rest of a Champions League quarter-final first leg? It seems farfetched but that might have been the case at the Santiago Bernabeu on Wednesday evening.
Francois Letexier, the French referee for the night, did not hesitate in showing Wesley Fofana a yellow card on five minutes after the Chelsea centre-back brought down Vinicius Jr. The tricky Brazilian had gotten past Fofana who had no choice other than to bring the winger down and take the punishment.
It's never ideal to get a yellow card so early on in the game especially when you're up against one of the best wingers in world football in Vinicius. It also has a psychological impact on how you approach the rest of the game. Fofana is at his very best when he is on the front-foot and aggressive with his tackles. Right in the attacker's face. But this essentially restricted him in doing just that.
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For the remainder of the evening, Fofana was a bit too stand-offish on Vinicius, but was probably right to do so. We've seen plenty of times over recent seasons that the Brazil international can make even the best defenders in the world look silly when they get too tight to him. His speed and dribbling is too much at times.
It would have been a really interesting duel had Fofana not been booked so early on because the Frenchman clearly thrives on those sort of battles. However, for the 85-plus minutes that followed, Fofana would proceed to stand off Vinicius so he wasn't drawn into a foul and leave his Chelsea side with ten men – which, ironically, they finished with anyway following Ben Chilwell's red card in the second-half.
Interim head coach Frank Lampard had the really difficult task of setting up his Chelsea side to make them tough to break down while still offering a threat at the other end. Unfortunately for Lampard, he couldn't really manage either of them, but at 2-0 the tie isn't over going into next week's second-leg although it will be such a big ask of this Chelsea side to overturn the scoreline.
"Partly the reason [going with a three-back to try and stop Vinicius]," Lampard explained to reporters. "I think I had different things to consider.
"Vinicius one-against-one is a big problem for any team so we wanted to create two-against-ones on that side of the pitch. It didn't help getting the yellow card for Fofana so early, it makes you nervous. He's a player that is very good.
"With a back-five, you want to not be a back-five as much as you can and we tried to enforce that. When we have the ball, we want to be a three, we want to use the width of the pitch. As I mentioned, we could have done that a bit better, it was a weapon for us to use today.
"Get the ball out of pressure, get it to the side. In terms of the system, the thinking was very clear to negate threats but to give us an in possession control of the game which we could have done more."
As well as trying to restrict Vinicius on the night, Lampard wanted to match up against Real's midfield three with a trio of his own in the middle of the pitch. N'Golo Kante, Enzo Fernandez and Mateo Kovacic started for Chelsea on the night but unfortunately Los Blancos' midfield dominated proceedings on their home turf.
Kante started really brightly but somewhat tailed off. Enzo showed moments of class as he always does but didn't see the ball as much as he would've liked and Kovacic had an off-day at his former home stadium. None of the three were really able to get close enough to the likes of Joao Felix and Raheem Sterling whenever the visitors did get a rare counter-attack on the night.
There were numerous calls from Chelsea supporters to revert back to a three-back formation before the game so Lampard did go with the popular option. It didn't work exactly the way he would have liked but in reality it would have been an extremely difficult task to get any sort of positive result at the Bernabeu with any system he played.
It doesn't matter what system you play when some of the players struggle with paying the right amount of attention to the finer details in the game. Chelsea switched off for Madrid's second goal. The hosts played a short corner to Toni Kroos, with nobody anywhere near the German midfielder, who found Vinicius who then set up Marco Asensio to score the second goal of the night.
Chelsea did try to make it a 3-5-2 but it was essentially a 5-3-2 because of how high up the pitch Madrid had the ball. When a team using this formation is unable to get on the ball too much, it means the opposition can exploit the spaces created. Real Madrid, the reigning European champions, are where they are for a reason. They're one of the smartest sides in the world and they have one of the most switched-on managers in the business in Carlo Ancelotti.
It will be interesting to see how Lampard approaches next week's decisive leg. There will be calls for him to go all-out but the interim head coach will know the dangers of that and if Real were to score the third goal of the tie, then it would be effectively over for his team.
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