The man who can teach any bird to sing silenced a football stadium, but not for long. Instead – as the final, wild, open, epic minutes went by – this place was as loud as anyone could remember it, more than 40,000 people standing to applaud, almost as exhausted as the men collapsing to the floor before them. It seemed almost absurd to think then, at the end of those last seven minutes of additional time when two teams were on the edge, knowing that a win would put them through and a defeat would pretty much put them out, that this place had ever been quiet.
Absurd, too, to think that what had appeared to be the decisive moment had happened a full half an hour earlier. And that since it there had been so many more. Kepa Arrizabalaga stood on his line. Twelve yards away, the former Queens Park Rangers player and Brentford resident Daniel Parejo. Chelsea led 2-1, but Jorginho had given Valencia a penalty and a lifeline.
Parejo’s face was a picture, breathing heavily, under pressure, but there is no one the crowd would rather have had standing there. Hush fell. Arrizabalaga leaped about. And then, when Parejo hit it, the goalkeeper flew.
There was nothing much wrong with the penalty, hit hard and into the corner. But the save from Chelsea’s goalkeeper was astonishing. If his body travelled fast, his hand travelled upwards even faster, an orange arm pushing the ball away. As his teammates leaped into his arms Arrizabalaga pointed at the corner – look out, they’re taking it – but he was the hero. High in the Mestalla, those who had travelled from London cheered, but the rest fell silent, as if hope had gone.
For Chelsea’s goalkeeper, it had just returned. On a night when he had looked uneasy, dropping a catch and then finding himself caught off his line, stranded way out of position as Rodrigo floated the ball over him, relieved as it floated over the bar. But football moves fast, and heroes are villains swiftly.
As a former coach at Athletic Bilbao, Arrizabalaga’s former club, once put it, you can go from whore to nun and back again in five minutes. The man who saved the penalty did not save a cross, instead waving it on its way. Rodrigo stepped over the ball, leaving it to Daniel Wass, who bent the ball to the far post. Arrizabalaga lifted his arms, like a man in control. But he wasn’t; he had misjudged the flight of it, over his head, off the far post and in.
Now the place was roaring; now the fun had really started. Already a hugely enjoyable game, in which there was a lot to admire, and plenty of accidents, it turned frantic. There was something fabulously primitive about it all. Not perfect, but a lot of fun. In fact mistakes might have defined this, cause for celebration as well as concern. It also was a reminder that for all Chelsea do well – and it is a lot – it is no guarantee of success. Frank Lampard did describe this as more of a “not-lose” game than a “must-win” one, mind, and he got that. He might have been thankful for it by the end: Valencia had missed a penalty and four sitters.
Everyone else got 98 minutes of entertainment. From the start there was a sense of danger every time Chelsea advanced, which they did as if someone had shaken the bottom and unscrewed the lid. And yet the danger from the home team somehow seemed even more real, their first three efforts all on target – and that did not count the sitter Maxi Gómez had missed entirely – and when they came forward in the second half, they should have scored sooner. After they finally did, they should have scored again.
Midway through the first half Gómez had sidefooted an easy chance home from close range. In his mind he did anyway. When he looked down, reality had intervened. He had, in fact, swiped at thin air. He had said before this game that in Uruguay, you lift up a rock and there is a football below, and crawling back under there probably felt like a good idea now; Arrizabalaga probably felt the same an hour on. Then, Rodrigo urged the Mestalla to lift him, and so it did, willing him to get a shot at redemption, but that shot was not very much better, seeing the Chelsea keeper save from five yards.
By the close of a raw and raucous finale, though, it was Rodrigo lying face down on the turf. He had bent his shot wide deep into added time and then with the clock showing 95.23 somehow stumbled and missed from three yards. “Yes, we can,” Mestalla had chanted. No, they couldn’t.
It was a difficult thing to understand but fun to find out.