Magical Morientes is danger man

At the Bernabeu, though, they are still talking of his loan as the worst bit of business in the history of football - and the fear is that, after tonight, Chelsea fans might be muttering likewise.

Watching Monaco's Spanish international going through his grand paces at Stamford Bridge last night was to wonder at how Real Madrid could afford to cast off a Rolls-Royce of a striker.

What folly. Not only to have loaned him out to potential Champions League opponents but to actually have been still paying 65 per cent of his substantial wages when his two goals, a header in each leg, did indeed dump them out of the quarter-finals last month.

It is even weirder still to think that, effectively, Madrid are still paying him an estimated £20,000 a week to now finish off Chelsea too.

He's already done half the job with his fabulous strike in the Louis II stadium and with such an impressive night's harrying - and chatting - that Marcel Desailly ended up offering the frustrated flying elbow which keeps him sidelined tonight.

"Morientes is great idol for Monaco; he has taken our club up to the next level," enthuses his captain, Ludovic Giuly. "His technique is awesome. He's hardly missed a chance since he arrived but what sets him apart is his humility.

"Here's one of the most complete strikers in the game, who has won three European Cups.

"He has come here from the biggest club in the world to play league matches in front of 3,000 people and he has not complained once." Morientes still reckons his "heart still beats for Madrid", despite how it was clearly trampled on by the club's hierarchy during their indecent clamour to sign Ronaldo, but he is probably resigned to the fact he will never play for them again.

This is because, ironically, his excellence while on loan at Monaco has increased his transfer value for Madrid, who would have no problem now getting a handsome fee for him to help fund other mega-deals.

Fabio Capello, at Roma, may well snap him up.

Monaco, it seems, wouldn't be able to afford to buy him but Morientes will be forever grateful that it has reinvented him.

"At Real Madrid you are always under pressure, seven days a week, because people always demand the maximum. You must win, win and win," he reckoned. "Yet in Monaco life is much more quiet. You don't think about a game with the same intensity. I'm enjoying it."

Not least because Didie r Deschamps, a coach he describes as "phenomenal", has given him licence to be a creator as well as predator. "There are times now when I am going further back to support the striker. At Real Madrid, I never had to because there were already people at the back to be the playmakers."

Still, goalscoring is his currency. A competition-leading eight in the Champions League and 20 in all games this season suggest a man, at 28, at the peak of his game. And the best goal of the lot this year? "The one against Chelsea," he says. "Because it was important, and very beautiful."

Deschamps, back on his old stamping ground, is counting on the Spaniard's experience. Monaco will field a fairly youthful team which, though not short on vibrancy or confidence, have no-one else with the 'Been there, done it' T-shirt.

"He is the role model who can pull the others with him," Deschamps asserts.

Even more responsibility will lie with Morientes if two key weapons in Monaco's counter-attacking strategy, striker Dado Prso and winger Jerome Rothen, are ruled out with the injuries they picked up in the league victory over Nice on Friday.

Deschamps will make a late decision about the pair's fitness today and may well offer a start to Shabani Nonda, the brilliant Congo international whose goal with his first touch when he came on as sub in the first leg finally sank Chelsea.

When Nonda, the French league's leading scorer last year, picked up a cruciate ligament injury last August, it was the prompt for the club to look to Morientes as a replacement. Many in Monaco believe they could prove a potent combination now the 27-yearold African is showing signs of his old sharpness again.

When asked after the first leg if Monaco could win the European Cup, Nonda just smiled incredulously: " No, that only happens in PlayStation."

This is why it is important for them to have Morientes around. He is a symbol of achievement, a winner to make them really believe in themselves when he predicts quietly: "We want this with all our strength and we have nothing to lose."

His heart may still be with Madrid but his head now offers the world to Monaco.