Cesc Fabregas denies his natural instincts for Chelsea's greater good – but Blues' late lapse undoes it all

The Chelsea midfielder led his team while not playing his natural game and it was all going perfectly, until one slip with 15 minutes gave Barcelona the upper hand

Cesc Fabregas directed Chelsea's midfield before his old team struck (AFP/Getty Images)

​Cesc Fabregas’s exasperation was instant and obvious as the ball skidded away from him in the penalty area and beyond Cesar Azpilicueta’s desperate lunge. He saw it fly to Andres Iniesta, his old teammate from Barcelona and the Spanish national team, and end up with Lionel Messi, his one-time La Masia class-mate. He knew how this one ends.

Sure enough Chelsea conceded an equaliser, a fatal away goal, from the one mistake they made all evening. Before Andreas Christensen’s square pass dissected Fabregas and Azpilicueta this had been exactly what Antonio Conte had demanded: a perfect tactical performance. But now Chelsea need to go to the Nou Camp and produce either a win or a high-scoring draw to reach the quarter-finals. The possible positive endings to their season are diminishing fast.

What made this even more painful is that for so much of this evening, Fabregas and Willian especially, but in truth this whole Chelsea team, had risen to the occasion. They had shown that they understood what Conte had told them beforehand. That this was not a night for possession, control, self-expression, and certainly not for fun. It was a night for discipline, defence, patience and ferocious hard work.

Eden Hazard had to play as a false nine, not his natural game and involving plenty of selfless running. Marcos Alonso, their outlet down the left, was pinned back more than ever before. But no one had to deny himself more in this Chelsea team than Fabregas.

Fabregas found himself up against his boyhood club and his former club, playing a tactical game that would have been alien to him for much of his career. Fabregas was always a possession player at Barcelona, Arsenal and Spain, a man who treasured possession of the ball and was better at using it than almost anyone else. But if Fabregas wanted to try the expansive artistic football that he grew up playing, then tonight he was on the wrong team.

For Chelsea, this evening was always going to be suffering, as Conte put it on Monday. And what was so impressive about the Chelsea players, whose commitment to the manager has not been blazingly obvious in recent weeks, is that tonight they all accepted Conte’s medicine with masochistic enthusiasm.


 Chelsea were made to work hard off the ball 
 (AFP/Getty Images)

It meant seeing just 30 per cent of possession even here at Stamford Bridge. It meant defending for long spells in a 5-4-1, with everyone compact, just like a never-ending Conte training exercise against an opposition who do not even exist. It meant choosing their moments to press, when Marc-Andre Ter Stegen was kicking, or when they sensed weakness in the Barcelona backline to exploit.

And there were times, watching this, when Fabregas looked slightly lost. The defensive side of the game has never been his strength and he can look fragile when good opponents run at him. He could certainly be harder to get past.

But despite these difficulties Fabregas and team-mates stuck to it and rode out wave after wave of first half pressure from Barcelona. This is what made their second half mistake so sickening: they survived a far more difficult spell at 0-0. The fact that Barcelona, for all their possession, could only make one real chance in the first half is testament to Chelsea’s defensive discipline. They did manage to do the hard work.

And while Fabregas was never going to see nearly as much of the ball as Sergio Busquets, Ivan Rakitic or Andres Iniesta, his job was to use it as well as he could on the few occasions he did. The longer the first half went on, the more dangerous Fabregas looked, his instinctive sense of where Hazard was running in front of him always useful. His dinked free-kick ended in Hazard volleying just over.

When, just before the break, he overhit a pass to Hazard slightly over his head, he jumped up and down in the centre circle in frustration. Knowing that he may only need to put a team-mate through once.

Sure enough Fabregas made the difference early in the second half. Increasingly influential on the edge of the Barcelona box, his speculative shot forced the corner from which Willian struck in the goal that sent Chelsea into the lead.

That was the lead that Chelsea had worked so hard for, and deserved because of their mastery of Conte’s plans. But the problem, as Conte predicted on Monday, was that the team had to be perfect in every aspect, all game. And the one killer slip they made in their own third with 15 minutes left has swung this tie decisively against them.