Jan Aage Fjortoft thinks that the performance of Benzema is nearly perfect. The song is called "1:24."
At least a top player settled a big game at last.
The awkward truth is that it was Benzema who turned the tie in Real Madrid's favour on Wednesday. The France international's stunning hat trick comprised of two exquisite headers, while the third strike was a reward for the sort of pressing some may think is beyond a player of older years.
Benzema has scored 42 goals in his last 42 games, 13 in his last seven, 10 in his last four, and the fourth player ever to score back-to-back hat tricks in the same season.
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Carlo Ancelotti, the Madrid coach, arrived in London a few hours before the game after testing negative for carbon dioxide.
Romelu Lukaku was thought to be the complete strikers by Chelsea. His first goal was to convert Vinicius Junior's 21st-minute cross.
The second was even better, meeting Luka Modric's delivery with his weight on the wrong foot yet somehow guiding a wonderful effort back across the goal line.
Less than a minute into the second half, Benzema hassled Mendy into an error, under-hitting a pass to Antonio Rudiger, and Kai Havertz responded with a goal of his own. The loose ball was rolled into an empty net by Benzema after he beat the centre-back in the tackle.
As a result of the evidence that has been produced over the last few weeks, they are currently more potent without the man that made them so.
The contrast with Benzema was stark to the point of embarrassment after he entered the game just after the hour mark.
Cesar Azpilicueta produced a left-wing cross to find Romelu Lukaku. His goal was off target.
It was very important for us to get a goal because there are no away goals anymore. We could have done that. There were lots of chances and spaces. The individual decisions today were not in line with our standards.
The home crowd was angry at the missed chance.
They are used to it. The attempt was hopelessly off target. In 26 minutes, he managed four touches, but one of them was to set up Hakim Ziyech.
It was clear from the beginning that the signing of Lukaku was to add ruthlessness to a team that often misses chances.
In the first 50 games of Tuchel's reign, the team kept 31 clean sheets, a higher tally than any other team in Europe's top five leagues.
This time around, given the dual mission of retaining their European crown and pursuing the premier league title, they wanted to align their resilience with a greater attacking threat.
The problem remains despite the signing of Romelu Lukaku as the one-man solution. Havertz has grown into the role of leading the attack at times with a strike-partner in a 3-5-2 system or alone in Tuchel's preferred 3-4-2-1, but even in their six-game winning run prior to the international break, admirable.
In a series of changes at the half-time break, Tuchel withdrew N'Golo Kante and Andreas Christensen for Mateo Kovacic and Ziyech, and he appeared to regret his line-up here.
Vinicius was off the pace from the beginning. Tuchel described creating that match-up with his 3-5-2 line-up as his mistake, and even turned down an easy chance to talk up the prospect of a second-leg revival.
Tuchel said that the tie was not still alive at the moment. No. We need to find our level again. I don't know where it is. In the second half of the game against Real Madrid, there was a repetition of the first half. We can't expect a result from this kind of performance because it is far off our level.
If we keep playing like this, we will lose atSouthampton and then we will get hammered at Real Madrid.
This could never be considered his fault alone. He is just the figurehead of a problem that Tuchel has wrestled with for some time, one that was exposed here by Real's superb first half display and several individual errors, none more damaging than Mendy's error within 45 seconds of the restart.
None of the Tuchel replacements worked well. It was odd that Ruben Loftus-Cheek replaced Jorginho at the same time as Romelu Lukaku was introduced.
The collective weakness of the right flank was a vulnerability that they could not mask, as evidenced by the fact that Reece James was rusty on only his second start since December due to injury.
With James and Azpilicueta not at their best, the full-backs are vital to Tuchel's approach and this is definitely a contributing factor to why the Blues struggled.
As Real's 30-year-old trio of Modric, Casemiro and Kroos all began to tire, the perseverance of Chelsea created several promising positions, including one excellent save by Courtois. Something has to change or they will be the next casualty.
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