In the wake of Chelsea’s highly dramatic Champions League exit on Tuesday night, Timo Werner admitted that at the joyous moment he put his side 3-0 up in the Bernabeu, he thought it would prove to be enough for us, rather than Real Madrid, to progress to the semi-final, although their firepower was always on his mind.
Such was the quality of the Blues performance throughout the second leg in Spain, it is easy to see why our striker was so hopeful of ultimate success, even if it looked unlikely at the start following the 3-1 defeat in the home leg.Werner’s well-created goal, plus an earlier strike from Mason Mount and a Toni Rudiger header cancelled that deficit out, but Real rallied to re-establish their winning position with Rodrygo and Karim Benzema goals.‘To come back after a 3-1 defeat in the home game was very good for us, we had everything that we needed at 3-0 up, we had the chance to go through,’ said Werner as looked back on the enthralling encounter.
‘But in the end you can’t stop Madrid over the whole time. We know that but we tried everything in normal time and in extra time but the home game made a difference because this [the away game] was nearly a perfect performance from us, so we are very disappointed after what we put into this game and how we played.‘When I celebrated [my goal] I thought this is it. We could have scored before that to make it 3-0 but the officials didn’t give it to us, it is a point you can talk about, but when I scored I thought we are through with this. We nearly gave no chances to Madrid but in the end we have to say the goals they scored were very good.
‘There was one moment in regular time when we were not like we were the whole game and Madrid have the quality to score against you and they showed it for the 3-1. I think it was a brilliant goal, a brilliant cross from Modric, hard to defend.’Emphasising he thought Chelsea were by far the better side in the second leg, Werner reckons we made one or two mistakes too many over the course of both matches of this quarter-final, ruing again that Stamford Bridge meeting last week.‘It was a problem because it put us in a very difficult situation, but also on the other side it was the thing that brings us for the second game to this level because we know that we have to step up and we have to give everything.‘We had a brilliant game and we had 10 minutes to go through to make a miracle come true, so it is very disappointing.’