It was watching the Brazilian Ronaldo score a hat-trick for Real Madrid in the Champions League against Manchester United that famously convinced Roman Abramovich to invest in the beautiful game.
Last night, it was Karim Benzema reprising that performance for the Spanish giants against Chelsea, in front of a man who is desperate to relieve Abramovich of his ownership.
If the watching Todd Boehly wants to strengthen his bid to buy the club, perhaps he should include in his mission statement a plan to lure the France striker to Stamford Bridge.
At 34, Benzema was a class apart from anyone else on the pitch — on another planet to the man Chelsea paid a club-record £97.5million for to be their own leader of the line.
Who knows, with Kylian Mbappe on his way to the Bernabeu this summer, Madrid and their No9 may decide this is an ideal time to part ways, although on this evidence he remains among the best in class.
But, if he was to become available, Chelsea should be at the front of what would be a very long queue. Benzema continued his vintage form with a masterclass in the art of centre-forward play.
His two first-half headed goals were so exquisitely dispatched that he would have struggled to be more precise had he picked the ball up with both hands and placed it in the net.
His deftness of touch repeatedly had Chelsea players losing their feet and their heads — and while his hat-trick goal, which put Madrid 3-1 up and firmly in control of this quarter-final at the halfway stage, was the result of a clownish mix-up between Edouard Mendy and Antonio Rudiger, it felt like a result of the panic his very presence provoked in Thomas Tuchel’s side.
Maybe Chelsea’s manager was guilty of lauding Benzema too heartily on the eve of this game, admitting he was the player above all he would want to add to his European champions. Perhaps his reputation preceded him and Chelsea were overawed before the first whistle blew.
The problem where Benzema is concerned is that he can back up all the talk with his actions; it would not take Tuchel giving him the big sell to see him get into Chelsea heads — he can do that all by himself.
Benzema represents everything that Chelsea are not at the cutting edge of the pitch. He is a game-changer, a ruthlessly efficient finisher and a focal point for everything Madrid do.
Kai Havertz, whose first-half header provided his side with the slenderest of lifelines, is Tuchel’s best option up front, but it is unfair to expect him to come close to the numbers Benzema is producing: 42 goals and counting this season.
Romelu Lukaku, meanwhile, is not even trusted for a game of this magnitude, with his consignment to the bench justified by his failure to hit the target with a header from six yards out that Tuchel admits could be critical.
“It was very important,” said the German. “There are no more away goals, so if we have only a one-goal deficit or a draw, then you see the momentum is back when we score.
“To come back with a chance like this at 3-2, after 16 shots in the second half alone, then goals are crucial. We didn’t get them.”
The question for Chelsea, with five days to go until the second leg and with the defence of their Champions League crown hanging by a thread, is how do they stop Benzema at the Bernabeu?
The warning after Saturday’s 4-1 defeat to Brentford was that a performance anything like as abject against Madrid would be heavily punished. And so it proved, with only the width of the bar denying Vinicius Jr from putting the visitors ahead after just 10 minutes and Benzema scuffing wide from close range before the break.
There are few similarities between Madrid’s captain and Brentford midfielder Vitaly Janelt, who scored twice at the Bridge on Saturday. The common denominator is a Chelsea defence that looks flimsier by the day. It was alarming the ease with which Vinicius Jr left Andreas Christensen flailing, which, in turn, desperately exposed Thiago Silva.
Christensen is Barcelona-bound — and on this evidence, Madrid fans will be relishing the first Clasico of next season.
In the Dane’s defence, he was not part of the Brentford horror show, but this hardly represented a strong argument to suggest he could have made a positive difference to that result.
It is a measure of just how incensed Tuchel was by his team that he replaced N’Golo Kante at half-time. Chelsea’s ‘Superman’ was powerless to stop Madrid repeatedly careering through central areas, with David Alaba being allowed to collect the ball on the edge of his own box in the first half before driving all the way into Chelsea’s final third without being dispossessed.
Tuchel’s side have lost the protection that has made them so hard to beat during his reign. That is why he was so alarmed last night, especially after the wake-up call provided by Brentford.
Perhaps his assertion that the tie is dead was a little premature — but a repeat performance at the Bernabeu and their reign as European champions certainly will be.
