Atletico Madrid bests Chelsea, completing an all-Madrid Final for Champions League

Champions League: Atletico Madrid tops Chelsea, seals all-Madrid final

Atletico Madrid is on its way to the UEFA Champions League final after a 3-1 win over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. Clive Rose/Getty Images

Jose Mourinho's Champions League semifinal misfortune struck for a fourth consecutive year, as Atletico Madrid beat Chelsea 3-1 at Stamford Bridge to earn a final place in Lisbon against neighbor Real Madrid. It will be the first time two teams from the same city have competed in a European cup final. Here is what caught our eye from Wednesday's result in London:

Man of the Match: Tiago Mendes, +Atlético de Madrid

There was not quite the fanfare surrounding the return of Tiago Mendes to Stamford Bridge that we saw in the round of 16 when Didier Drogba returned with Galatasaray, but the effect was altogether more decisive.

Atletico fans concerned about the suspension of Gabi, so important to the midfield this season, needed not to have worried; Tiago was a steady presence in the center of the field, and his vision set up the visitors' first and third goals, with floated cross-field passes releasing right back Juanfran behind Eden Hazard on both occasions.

Tiago was a Premier League winner under Jose Mourinho in 2004-05 and spoke before the game of the similarities between his ex-boss and Diego Simeone, for whom every decision paid off perfectly in London - from the call to start Adrian Lopez, the first goalscorer, ahead of Raul Garcia, and to restore Arda Turan, scorer of the third, to the team.

"When you think of both you immediately see not just the figure of a coach, but of a leader," Tiago told El Pais last week. "These are two very similar teams and two coaches who know exactly what they are playing for. Mou puts himself inside your head. Simeone instils an idea in you too."

If it was a clash between the two coaches, there was only one winner.

Mourinho, it might be said, was even panicked into making a substitution too early, bringing on Samuel Eto'o at 1-1 with 40 minutes still to play. Was he chasing the game too early? It was Eto'o who conceded the second-half penalty which as good as killed the contest.

A word on the penalty scorer, too: Diego Costa gave John Terry a bruising encounter in Madrid and, though he had little to feed on here, it was the same story. If this was a job interview for a role at +Chelsea Football Club next season, Costa passed with flying colors: he has the physique, power, and eye for goal that reminiscent of Didier Drogba in his pomp - just the type of player, in fact, that would fit perfectly into a Mourinho side.

He also showed impressive composure with a nerve-wracking penalty. He struggled to keep the ball from rolling off a divot on the penalty spot, and was booked for taking over a minute to spot the ball. As the time passed, the Chelsea players surrounded him to increase the pressure, and indeed his thinking time before the kick. When it came, the kick was decisive: even though he had missed four penalties this season, Costa smashed the ball into the roof of the net. That made it 2-1 but it was Turan's goal, Atletico's third that was created by Tiago and Juanfran, that provided the coup de grace.

Fernando Torres' opening goal did not change too much for Atletico, which, penalties aside, always needed an away goal to progress. That its goal came so soon after Chelsea's summed up the story of the day in London, where subway strikes left fans relying on buses, just a few days after Liverpool boss Brendan Rodgers accused Mourinho of parking "two buses" in front of its goal in last week's win at Anfield. So we waited two hours and six minutes for one goal between these teams, then two came in seven minutes.

WATCH: Torres scores vs. former club Atletico, won't celebrate

Moment of the Day: Adrian gets the away goal

Adrian's equalizer was a huge turning point, coming one minute before the halftime break and requiring Mourinho to push for a second goal. It could have been avoided too, coming as the result of a series of defensive errors, starting with Hazard losing Juanfran at the far post, Terry and Ashley Cole failing to cut out the cross, and Adrian with the time to hit the ball into the ground and see it canon into the top corner.

Adrian's selection was another perfect decision from Simeone: he provided more pace on the counter than Raul Garcia, but also has a a habit of making it count in the big games, as he was fantastic in the win over Barcelona in the last round. The fact that he had gone 21 games without a goal? No problem.

Thibaut Courtois, playing his first game at Stamford Bridge, nearly three years after signing for Chelsea, also reacted smartly to a John Terry header soon after the goal, and the more Chelsea pushed, the more secure Courtois looked. He did need the post to save him from a David Luiz header. But when Mourinho looks back at the game, he will know that the loss of concentration just before halftime changed this tie.

It's all over in London! 3-1 Atletico, and it's Madrid Mania in the Champions League. Atletico Madrid faces Real Madrid May 24 in Lisbon.
— SI Soccer (@si_soccer) April 30, 2014

How Atletico Madrid stacks up against +Real Madrid C.F.

No one would dare admit it, but you would imagine Real Madrid would rather have faced Chelsea than its local rival in the final in Lisbon. Since Diego Simeone came to Atletico Madrid, one of his greatest achievements has been to end his team's curse against Real Madrid: a run of 25 games and 14 years without a win.

That came in the Copa del Rey final last season - ironically when Mourinho was coaching the side - and since then, Atletico has beaten Madrid at the Bernabeu (1-0, Diego Costa) and drawn 2-2 at Estadio Vicente Calderon. In between there was a Copa del Rey semifinal that Real Madrid won 5-0 on aggregate.

Diego Costa after PK Goal (Getty Images)

Despite that, Simeone is proving himself a master of the cup competitions, winning the Europa League and European Super Cup (against Chelsea) as well as the Copa del Rey. His Atletico side is unbeaten in Europe this season and has only conceded six goals in 12 games.

Will it be able to keep a clean sheet against Real Madrid, and the might of its Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale combination? We have just over three weeks to find out, but if the story of this European season is that counterattack has overtaken possession-based play as the dominant tactic, then this final will continue that narrative.

Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/soccer/news/20140430/champions-league-atletico-madrid-chelsea/#ixzz30PtWSpso

Chelsea Pulls off Unlikely in 2nd leg, Advances to Champions League Semi's

Chelsea topples Paris Saint-Germain to advance to Champions League semis

Leander Schaerlaeckens

+FOX Soccer

Julian Finney / Getty Images Europe

Chelsea's Demba Ba scores the pivotal goal vs. Paris Saint-Germain.

It was a heart-stopping night that produced a miracle and a near-miracle. The sides that had been beaten so badly in the first legs of these UEFA Champions League quarterfinals that the second games seem to leave them with little chance to advance made real matches of their contests regardless. +Chelsea Football Club’s late 2-0 home win made up for their 3-1 away loss to +PSG - Paris Saint-Germain in the first leg, even if +Borussia Dortmund's 2-0 win on German soil wasn’t enough to overturn the 3-0 loss to +Real Madrid C.F. in Spain last week.

It would have been ironic if Chelsea had been bounced from the tournament by a team that followed the Blues’ own blueprint. In the last few years, PSG became a side that was quickly bought together with the stated aim of winning in Europe, just as Chelsea were a decade ago. Chelsea was much the better side on Tuesday, as PSG evidently hadn’t acquired quite enough experience and know-how to hold down the aggregate result, especially without their best player, the injured striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Both sides made an eager start to the game. Chelsea obviously needed goals. But Paris Saint-Germain’s players simply aren’t wired to sit in. Playing time is so competitive in Paris these days and the pressure to perform so intense that they’d all quite like to stand out.

Still, it took almost half an hour for either side to forge a serious chance. In the 28th minute, by which Chelsea’s Eden Hazard had been taken off for Andre Schurrle, courtesy of an injury, Frank Lampard’s free kick by the corner of the box deflected violently but Salvatore Sirigu was very sharp with his reaction save at his near post.

Chelsea made the breakthrough in the 32nd minute. Weirdly, a long throw-in into the Parisians’ box bounced off the back of a ducking David Luiz. It fell for the wide-open Schurrle all the same, however, who cleanly slid his finish past Sirigu to put Chelsea down just a goal on aggregate – with the tie-breaking away-goal in hand.

CHAMPIONS LEAGUE

• Manchester United 1, Bayern Munich 1
• Barcelona 1, Atletico Madrid 1
• Paris Saint-Germain 3, Chelsea 1
• Real Madrid 3, Borussia Dortmund 0

Chelsea seemed to have recaptured the spirit of their round of 16 tie with Napoli during the 2011-12 season, when they overturned a 3-1 aggregate deficit after the first leg under newly installed manager Roberto Di Matteo, after Andre Villas-Boas’s sacking, and went on to win lifting the European crown.

And from there on, traffic flowed almost exclusively from the English to the French side of the field, with PSG only mustering the odd chance through Edinson Cavani. Still, the winning second goal would prove elusive for Chelsea. On the very next play, Schurrle was brought down in the box by Marco Verratti, who had already had a yellow card. But no foul called, and to be fair, such would have been a tad soft. Gary Cahill knocked a free kick down for himself in the box in the 37th minute but sliced through his finish.

And early in the second half, a really handsome attack, in which Chelsea pinged the ball from one side of PSG’s box to the other, culminated in a return to the central Shurrle, whose shot clanged off the bar past a beaten Sirigu. Not a minute later, Oscar curled a free kick from just outside the box onto that same uncharitable bar. Schurrle’s clever run in the 68th minute resulted in a shot that was simple for Sirigu to save.

As desperation set in, Demba Ba finally scored the winner in the 87th minute. He stayed aware on yet another scrambly play in the box and was able to slide home the liberating goal from up close, after which his manager Jose Mourinho sprinted down the sideline to bellow instructions into his celebrating players’ ears.

DOWN TO EIGHT

Relive the best shots from the UEFA Champions League's quarterfinal stage.

Chelsea thus advanced to the semis – Mourinho’s fifth in a row with three clubs – while PSG failed to match their best-ever European performance: reaching the semis in 1994-95.

Real Madrid, meanwhile, pushed into their fourth consecutive final four appearance.

Los Blancos survived a dramatic test in Dortmund, their first leg 3-0 victory just enough to see them into the semifinals despite a heroic Borussia battle.

Playing without injured Cristiano Ronaldo, Real Madrid nearly saw everything slip away when Dortmund keeper Roman Weidenfeller's 16th-minute penalty save turned the match on its head.

With Ronaldo not available, Angel DiMaria took the spot kick after a handling call on Lukasz Piszczek offered Real the opportunity to kill off the tie. DiMaria's shot to the right post was saved by Weidenfeller, that moment bringing both Borussia and the sellout BvB Stadion crowd to life.

When a dreadful Pepe headed-back pass fell for Marco Reus, the Borussia standout made no mistake in the 23rd minute. It was truly game-on when Reus scored again in the 37th minute, roofing a rebound of a Robert Lewandowski shot that came back off the right post. Reus had begun the play by springing his Polish attack partner after Illaramendi gave away possession near the halfway line.

It was one-way traffic now as the Madrid midfield looked non-existent and the defense was correspondingly shaky, but the Spanish side weathered the storm to the break.

That gave boss Carlo Ancelotti the opportunity to re-organize his struggling team. The introduction of Isco in midfield for the out-of-place Illaramendi was the first step in a much-improved second 45 minutes, but even with that adjustment Real Madrid can consider themselves very fortunate that Henrikh Mkhitaryan had a night of misery in front of goal.

Three golden chances fell to the Dortmund forward, but he shot wide of an open net, hit the near post of another open net and finally had a begging opportunity saved by Madrid keeper Iker Casillas. Indeed, Casillas pulled off a string of vital stops around the 70th minute as Dortmund threw everything into the chase for an equalizer.

Weidenfeller was also outstanding for Borussia, who ended a 34-match Real Madrid streak during which they had scored at least once in every match. In the end, his saves which kept Dortmund in with a chance were not quite enough to fuel a miracle turn-around.

FOXSoccer's Jerry Trecker contributed to this column.