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Antonio Rudiger names the two Real Madrid stars who killed Chelsea

Antonio Rudiger
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The Champions League title holders crashed out of the competition after an extra time defeat to Real Madrid.

Chelsea defender Antonio Rudiger has singled out the ‘individual class’ of Luka Modric and Karim Benzema as the main reason for the club’s Champions League quarter-final exit.

The Blues mounted a remarkable second leg comeback at the Bernabeu to overcome a two-goal first-leg deficit.  Rudiger, along with Mason Mount and Timo Werner, scored. The trio’s goals handed Chelsea a 3-0 lead.

However, Modric supplied a sensational assist for Rodrygo to score, and Benzema – who scored a hat-trick in last week’s first leg – added a second in extra time to seal a 5-4 aggregate victory for Real Madrid.

‘Individual class comes to light’

In his post-match interview, Rudiger singled out Modric and Benzema as the two influential operators that Chelsea failed to handle.

“Over the two legs if you make these kind of mistakes you get punished,” the German defender told BT Sport. “It was a do or die for us. Before the game, not everybody thought we could get to 3-0 but then the individual class comes to light with Modric and Benzema, now we are here.”

Rudiger added: “The positive is we didn’t give up. Not many teams can come here and dominate them as we did. But over the two legs if you make the mistakes we did, you get punished.

“That was the game plan, to find our No 10s with Ruben [Loftus-Cheek] and Mason between Casemiro and the defense. We got the goal and we controlled, we didn’t panic, we did it quite well and in the second half we scored goals and did everything we could.”

What next?

 Real Madrid will face either Manchester City or local rivals Atletico Madrid in the Champions League semi-finals.

As for Chelsea, They’ll next take on Crystal Palace this coming Sunday in the FA Cup semi-finals.  At the time of writing, Bet365 has priced a Blues win at 1.57. This suggests they have a 64% chance of progressing to the final at Wembley.

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