Mystical, magical, Madrid: Real make the impossible seem inevitable again

Thomas Tuchel had demanded a “fantastic script” and boy did he get one, another epic and implausible story unfolding. Just not quite as he had hoped; Real Madrid had rewritten the ending, the way they so often seem to do. “The magic of the Bernabéu,” Carlo Ancelotti called it. It would have been barely believable, except that they had seen it somewhere before. The last time they were here, in fact.

Go back a month. Crtl C, Ctrl V. Scribble out where it says PSG and write Chelsea instead. Just don’t touch the mentions of Madrid, the club who have made the impossible feel inevitable. It doesn’t matter if it’s absurd, how bad things are – how bad they are – when that final scene comes, there they are: still standing, rubble all round. Just as you imagined, just as they like it.

Asked how much they had had suffered, Ancelotti replied: “A lot, a lot.” In the dressing room, Dani Carvajal said: “It’s better this way.” You don’t know how they’ll do it but you know somehow they’ll do it. The Bernabéu knew at least, and that’s part of it, like some self-fulfilling prophecy, each story feeding the next. Casemiro had expressed that the day before: “This club lives to win impossible games, games where no one believes.” Modric called it “another incredible night”, the key word another: he recalled epic evenings against Juventus, PSG, Schalke. Nacho Fernández explained it through Madrid’s DNA.

“There are things we have to improve,” the defender admitted, and beyond the emotion there is an analysis, flaws to address, more purely footballing elements to examine in search of their success here, even beyond an excellent first leg in London. The introduction of Eduardo Camavinga for Toni Kroos, for one – vital here, as it was against PSG,