Timo Time: Is the Champions League final built for Chelsea’s Werner?

Timo Time: It sounds like some fancy European aperitif’s orange-hued summer tagline. Which, if Chelsea’s Timo Werner follows through on the aspirations that are about to be proferred in this article, it could well be. If Werner delivers, we’ll forget all the howlers, the “how’s he done that?” questions and the “holy sh*t, he’s actually onside.” We’ll all be drinking fancy European aperitifs in honor of his true arrival at Stamford Bridge . . . by way of Porto.

At the moment it is an “if,” with Werner, it always feels like there’s an “if” or uncertainty lurking somewhere. A clause waiting to be considered, a possibility wrapped under those flailing arms and fumbling feet. This is especially interesting because when he joined from RB Leipzig last summer, there was an air of guarantee around him that felt unlike any of the Blues’ previous frontman flop purchases of recent times. He had 25 goals written all over him, the diminutive German maestro! Oh, how he did.

51 games and 12 goals later, it is the “ifs” and “coulds” that reign definitively over the crazy, giddy yore of “guarantee.” Yet, here we go again—Grand Theft Auto meme style—talking about his potential to finally come good. In the biggest game of the season, nay biggest game of the last nine years, no less. The question remains: Can he do it? Could he? And if he could, how?

Well, firstly, slow down. If we knew the answers to all of those questions, we’d surely be a tried and trusted member of Thomas Tuchel’s coaching staff by now—which we’re not. Still, there’s a sneaking suspicion, a building feeling in the gut, that Werner’s time is now. That, cometh the Portuguese hour, cometh the man. Cometh Sergio Aguero’s last Manchester City bow, cometh Timo Werner’s first hurrah. Cometh the Estadio do Dragao, cometh the Dragon.

We’ve already seen the German’s prodigious pace work wonders against the occasionally ponderous Man City defence twice this season, with his two assists winning both games. There’s no doubt Tuchel’s tactics will be geared toward getting him into those one-on-one situations on the flanks where he stretch teams and extend them to the point of breaking. More often than not though, that leads to Werner making the killer pass, and not the killer shot. Indeed, whether the 25-year-old has a killer shot at all is a question unanswered in west London so far—emphasis on the “so far.”

But then, isn’t that the point? Isn’t that accusation in and of itself part of the reason why, somehow, Saturday seems custom made for Werner’s redemption? That all those forlorn looks to the turf or the sky. All those science-defying miskicks. All those offsides—all those f***ing offsides! They have all been building to one moment, one Saturday night, say 9:30 local time, when it all comes together. When the legs, the brain and the shoulder (that’s offside, Timo!) come together to produce a moment of magic that redeems all those misfires. Call it his Fernando Torres Nou Camp moment circa 2012. Perhaps you would rather call it crazy conjecture born out of sheer hope. Whatever you prefer.

We wouldn’t call it that though. We’d call it some amalgamation of destiny, fate and just rewards. If any player in that Chelsea camp deserves his moment in the sun—well, the Porto floodlights—it’s him. You know what, Clive, at the end of such a strange season as this, he just might.