Sometimes the old ones are the best. Written off as too slow to handle the pace of modern football, this was Real Madrid turning back the clock and reminding the rest of Europe that there will always be a place in the game for midfielders as smart as Luka Modric and strikers as deadly as Karim Benzema.
It did not matter that Modric is 36 or that Benzema, who has scored consecutive hat-tricks in the Champions League, is 34. By the end the notion that Chelsea would run through Madrid felt preposterous. Carlo Ancelotti, a veteran of these encounters, had outwitted Thomas Tuchel. Toni Kroos, who turned 32 in January, had helped Modric run the game. Benzema had completely obliterated Chelsea’s defence.
