Seventy-one per cent of the earth is water. The rest is covered by N’Golo Kante.

The Frenchman delivered a midfield masterclass during Chelsea’s 1-1 draw at Real Madrid in the first leg of their Champions League semi-final.

Known as perhaps football’s greatest engine, just watching Kante on Tuesday night would’ve left you gasping for air.

And it wasn’t just in defence. An ageing Madrid side, featuring the likes of Luka Modric, Toni Kroos and Marcelo, were left chasing Kante’s shadow for most of the game.

In fact, the Chelsea star completed more successful dribbles (6) than the entire Madrid team put together (5).

Formerly notorious dribbler Eden Hazard, now at the Bernabeu, would have been proud of those stats in his Stamford Bridge days.

Kante’s former Blues midfield partner Cesc Fabregas tweeted during the game: “N’Golo has always been a big game player. Never doubt him. He players for two.”

Try three.

With the help of Kante, Chelsea were far superior to Madrid on the night, and the slight advantage of their away goal could have been far greater.

Kante himself was guilty of wastefulness in the final third, but while we’ll let him off, Timo Werner simply had to score from six yards out when he fired straight at Thibaut Courtois.

In the end, a superb goal from Christian Pulisic was cancelled out by an equally impressive equaliser by Karim Benzema during a thrilling first-half.

The second-half was mainly just Kante running around everyone.

Players like him are so important to teams and yet many fans only see the "shiny" goal scorers and dribblers. So happy to have him in the national team and would love to have him at PSG. I think he is the best in the world in his role on the pitch right now.

He is one of the greatest assets of our national team... he is our French Modric if you will

Like Kloop or some other said, having player like Kante is like have 0.5 man more!

He's very good!

@SecondPoteauPavard Indeed, there is a lot of focus on the player who score or lead to goals but player like Kante for me are just as important if not even more.

I'm just so happy he get to play under Tuchel who can take full advantage of his potential.