In a little more than 20 minutes into the first leg of Real Madrid's Champions League quarter-final against Chelsea on Wednesday,

Modric saw something the two did. He stood on the edge of Chelsea's penalty area, admiring the flight of the cross he had just delivered.

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He would have been pleased with it: a clever, truncated number, swirling away from Edouard Mendy's target, and toward his partner, Karim Benzema.

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Benzema had options. The most obvious one was an attempt to get the ball down the right side of Mendy.

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Or, perhaps, he could try to repeat the header that opened the scoring minutes earlier, one of the forces that shone before

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Mendy had a chance to recognize him. In a pinch, Benzema may have time to get the ball down and play from there.

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Chelsea vs real Madrid

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