He came, he saw, he was booked in time added on at the end, and while there was no Champions League upset for José Mourinho, the new Benfica coach was afforded the kind of recognition that Chelsea fans are reluctant to give their current manager.
At Stamford Bridge, the home support sang his name on more than one occasion – and it is not as if this is the first time they have seen him in the away dugout. This defeat, by the slender margin of a first-half away goal, was his eighth return to Chelsea as the opposition manager, the first of which was more than 15 years ago. He had never returned with a club as far below Chelsea in the general order of things as Benfica, and yet he so nearly came away with a point.
The current Chelsea side are not a joy to watch, and this was just another evening when the home fans had to endure their side struggling for form. They were under the hammer in the closing stages even before the substitute João Pedro was dismissed for a second yellow card in time added on. A strange team selection from Enzo Maresca was rewarded with a mediocre performance.
No one would pretend that Mourinho ever set out to be the great entertainer, but he did oversee some of the great Chelsea European nights in his first spell at the club that began 20 years ago. By comparison, this merited barely a footnote in the club’s Champions League history. Maresca picked the teenage academy boy Tyrique George as a No 9, and Facundo Buonanotte, 20, as a No 10 – a player who had not originally been registered for the Champions League.
