PSG feel the full force of history in dispiriting loss to Real Madrid

“Don’t you sit in our chair.” It was just a moment in the middle of the madness, another picture of a wild, epic night with all its drama and its silliness too, but David Alaba had summed it up somehow. As the Santiago Bernabéu lost its collective mind on Wednesday and Karim Benzema slipped to his knees, fists clenched, the German picked up a white plastic chair and raised it triumphantly to the sky. Iconic and, when he chose to caption it, symbolic too: you don’t just unseat Real Madrid.

“We’re the Kings of Europe!” the banner had declared before the game; by the end of it, they were singing the same line, still there, still unmoved, the state unable to overthrow them, the significance of this meeting made all the more profound by the power battle that divides these clubs. For Paris Saint-Germain, the European Cup has become an obsession that deepens with every year that passes, like this one will, without them winning it. By the time the club were founded, Real Madrid had six of them. Since the Qataris took over, Madrid have won four.

Some things money can’t buy, at least not yet – and not just the trophy. Frustration at that, a feeling of injustice and impotence, was expressed when the PSG owner, Naseer Al-Khelaifi left the directors box to confront the referee after the game, in scenes Monica Marchante, the Spanish TV reporter who witnessed them, described as “frankly unpleasant”.

Real Madrid have 13 European Cups. Theirs is a history, an identity built on the implausible that is partly self-perpetuating. There is somethingthere. “Magic,” their manager, Carlo Ancelotti, called it. “History matters, history plays,” the former Madrid winger Míchel says. “No one knows why but when you pull on that Real Madrid shirt you