The faint trace of smile on his face and his moderate tone when recreating what happened a few minutes before made me think that this success was as simple as blowing and making bottles. But not. “I want to last tonight because these are magical nights”Karim Benzema admitted. Who wouldn’t love after scoring three goals in a knockout match in Europe’s biggest club tournament? As he did 28 days ago to leave Paris Saint-Germain on the road, the Frenchman charged a triple against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge and put Real Madrid on track for the Champions League semi-finals. Next Tuesday, the Spanish team will have to go through the final toll at the Santiago Bernabéu. His flagship player has already done a lot to cement that route.

Two headers in the first half, the first after a cross from Brazilian Vinicius Junior from the left and the other with the help of Croatian Luka Modric from the right, both with very demanding body movements and separated by just 165 seconds. And a song of effort and optimism in the second half to hit after a long decline, forcing a rude mistake by goalkeeper Edouard Mendy and define behind open doors. All under the perennial rain on London night that gave an epic patina to a striker’s triplet these days he can be identified as the best on the planet without too much risk to stare with wide eyes.

This magical night that the Frenchman from a Moroccan family wants to stretch as long as he can to allow his team to beat Chelsea, something he had not achieved in the previous five confrontations. The troubled European champion, who knocked out Real Madrid in one of the semifinals last year and is now juggling to stay competitive while living up to the sanctions imposed by the British government on its owner, the Russian tycoon who Roman Abramovich, protested, he was excited at the german discount Kai Havertz at the end of the first half, but ended up succumbing to the laziness of a man who made the goal of almost everything he touched.

“Three is a very important goal, but I’m happier for the third because I missed one in the first half and I’m thinking about it.”, the gunner admitted after the fight. In these three calls against a team that has maintained a clean sheet in 10 of their last 15 games, Benzema reaches 11 in this edition of Champions (similar to Ivorian Sébastien Haller, no longer in the race with Ajax, and one less than Polish Robert Lewandowski) and to 82 in the history of the contestonly surpassed by Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Lewandowski.

In addition, in the current campaign he has also contributed 24 in the Spanish League, where his team is flying at cruising speed towards the title and he is on his way to the Pichichi award, and 2 in that country’s Super Cup, if where is Meringue occupied in January. In total there were 37 of the 36 games. The last 7 made by the group led by Carlo Ancelotti were his and also 10 in the last 11.

“Now we go into the field to win and show who Real Madrid is. Things went well because we played well from one minute to the last. When we have a Madrid like this, it’s very good for us.”, celebrated the great responsible for success. Anyway, he clarified that the work is not done: “There is another battle in front of our fans, on our field and we will give everything to win again”. Chelsea have a lot to do to prevent Madrid from reaching the top four in their fetish tournament, which they have already achieved 13 times. The first step was to kill that striker who toured London on Wednesday on his superb walk.