Not this time, José old boy. There was, in the end, a sense of justice served by the result of this extraordinary, at times extraordinarily toxic, match that saw Chelsea eliminated from the Champions League on away goals by the 10 men of Paris Saint-Germain.

By the time Thiago Silva had headed beyond Thibaut Courtois to make it 2-2 on the night, PSG had played for 83 minutes with just 10 men, and had pushed Chelsea back with some spirited, inventive football.

Throughout a relentlessly concussive match the French champions had appeared to be battling constantly some invisible malign force from the wings. Oh yes: it’s that man again. José Mourinho may have spent most of the night in his seat, but this was a match that had his fingerprints all over it, a calculated and in many ways beautifully crafted piece of theatre that might, but for some unusually poor defending by the home side, have hustled Chelsea through to the quarter-finals at the expense of patently more vibrant opponents.

As a general rule it is probably easier simply to pick out the bits of Mourinho’s pre-match press conferences that aren’t carefully barbed provocations. This time, however, it had seemed Mourinho had good reason to linger on PSG’s aggression – or “aggressivity” – in the first leg of this tie. It is a good slightly made-up José word. The best Mourinho teams have always had a bit of aggressivity about them, so much so that for some the spectacle of Mourinho tutting at the use of such tactics will sound a bit like Dapper Laughs bemoaning the decline of polite society.

Mourinho had a fair point on the treatment of Eden Hazard, who had been kicked around the Parc in Paris. The suspicion will remain, though, that in an attempt to offer covering fire to his man, Chelsea’s manager detonated a bonus hit on the opposition, as the most telling act of the first half came from the referee, Bjorn Kuipers, who will, quite frankly, have nightmares about ever coming back to west London again.

At first all seemed to be going quietly to plan. With half an hour gone, Hazard was able to cut inside and produce the single outstanding moment of skill of the half, swivelling away from Marco Verratti and oozing past Blaise Matuidi only to be bundled to the ground. The referee waved play on, with what turned out to be a misleading show of calm leniency, as within a minute the match had exploded.

First: exit Zlatan Ibrahimovic. His challenge on Oscar looked worse in real time. But it was simply forceful rather than malicious. Never mind aggressivity, this was barely even aggression, as Ibrahimovic looked to be trying to pull out of a mistimed collision.

Kuipers’ red card was out of his pocket in a whiplash quick-draw movement as Ibrahimovic stalked off with a face like thunder, prelude to a 15-minute storm of sly fouls, much bleating on both sides and a general sense of poke-in-the-kidneys cynicism from two extravagantly talented teams.

Matuidi was booked for tripping Hazard. David Luiz appeared to elbow Diego Costa. Oscar hurtled about across the front line in search of a fight. And finally Costa might have had a penalty after a slaloming dribble ended with him once again beating the turf in frustration. This looked like a dive but was probably in fact a penalty. Perhaps he needs classes in how to fall more nonchalantly. Come on Diego. Again. Fall natural.

Not that Chelsea were able to press home their numerical advantage. This is after all not the first time that Ibrahimovic has disappeared before half-time on an English football pitch, and PSG are a classy and resilient group of footballers. With 57 minutes gone they should really have taken the lead, Edinson Cavani hitting the inside of the post after shimmying beautifully past Courtois.

After that, PSG played like a team with 12 rather than 10, as the Premier League leaders found themselves defending desperately at times. Matuidi was a thrillingly urgent force on the left, Cavani a blur of muscular motion. In between times Costa should, by Ibrahimovic rules, have been sent off after 73 minutes for a late, clumsy tackle on Thiago Silva.

Chelsea did finally open the scoring with 10 minutes left, Costa’s scuffed shot teeing up Gary Cahill to blast the ball home. David Luiz’s equaliser with full time looming was deserved, just as Hazard’s penalty six minutes into extra time had never really seemed like the final word against this brilliantly spirited throng of zingy red shirts.

In the end, Chelsea simply weren’t good enough against high-class opponents, after 210 minutes of football during which Mourinho’s varied attacking talents seized the initiative only briefly in the first half in Paris.

Mourinho spoke about lack of concentration and small mistakes at the end.

Others will see a team bent to its manager’s shape, most notable now for its hard-nosed professionalism, in which a player as talented as Oscar can find himself hurtling about in a dutiful blue-red mist; and which here looked undeniably short of the very best in this competition.

With this in mind it is surely time to wonder a little about the direction of this team. As key players have tired or lost form, Chelsea have reverted to their most gristly, Mourinho-ish form in recent weeks. Here they might even have won this tie against the head with a performance of relentless tooth-and-nail professionalism. Instead the champions-elect are the first – most likely – of three English clubs to exit the Champions League at this early knockout stage. For all the curdled entertainment of the spectacle, the challenge for this evolving Chelsea must be to find a team that can set out to win a match such as this without the familiar sense of theatre from the fringes.

• This article was corrected on 12 March 2015 to reflect the fact that Diego Costa’s foul in the 73rd minute was on Thiago Silva.

