Everyone knew how it would end; everyone has seen how it ends. The players knew it; The spectators at the Wembley and the millions watching on television knew it, perhaps the Yellow Wall of Borussia Dortmund and the team’s biggest fan, the manager Edin Terzic, knew it too.
It would end with the uncontrollable, unpreventable destiny of Real Madrid celebrating another Champions League final night; the muscle-memory in those trophy-bearing arms holding the giant ears of the trophy into the Wembley night sky, their opponents wandering aimlessly, their legs wilting as much as their hearts.
No pair in football exists quite like Real Madrid and Champions League. So in love with each other that they start to resemble each other, as when happy couples grow old. One is often the identity of the other, one and the same, inseparable and irresistible after all the years, content with their familiarity. The thought of Real Madrid, those famous names and iconic images roll out of your head, and they always have one hand on the big-eared trophy. No one remembers them winning a league, even if it has been harder to achieve in the last 15 years than the premier European club competition. In the same span that they have won six Champions League titles, they have collected five league titles. Real Madrid, then, is the ultimate European trophy. It is their identity, its cause. It is, they feel, their trophy.
So Dortmund was not just facing an elite team, or history, or heritage, but an identity and a cause. The more a breakthrough goal eluded them, the heavier the burden felt. You could feel the mood as early as half-time. When the whistle blew, Dortmund men looked forlornly into the ground, they could feel the earth beneath them falling apart. How they have spilled their chances, how gloriously they squandered the fairytale ending to a fairytale season; they could sense the cloud of doom descending on them. Madrid’s men, though, were ambling into the tunnel, captured by a vivaciously smiling Vinicius Junior, who had endured a shoddy first half.
Real Madrid’s Dani Carvajal celebrates scoring their first goal with Nacho, Rodrygo, Eduardo Camavinga and Federico Valverde. (Reuters)
Someone just tuning in could think Dortmund were battered. On the contrary, they were the far superior side, moving upfield with pace and precision, pressing aggressively, controlling the tempo, getting runners pierce into the space behind the Madrid backline. Several times they came close. Karim Adeyemi, after a rapid run from the half-line had just Thibaut Courtois, playing in just his fifth game of the season, to beat. He could see the lights of history winking at him, then he just saw the spread-out frame of the Belgian goalkeeper, his halo and stature. The 22-year-old German froze, made a heavy touch and Dani Carvajal hoofed the ball to safety. Ian Maatsen soon sliced a pass through the center of the defense and released Niclas Fullkrug, Dortmund’s most prolific goal-scorer this season. But the nerves swelling and pulsing in his head and feet, he lashed the ball across Courtois and onto the base of the right-hand post. Another night, another opponent, they could have been 2-0.
But it was the Champions League night, and it was Real Madrid. It could not have gone any other way. The yellow army buzzed, Madrid never really strummed into gears. The lively Adeyemi and industrious Marcel Sabitzer had shies at the goal blocked. Somehow, they survived the onslaught. That’s what they often do, especially in the post Ronald-Bale era, becoming champions without exuding the authority of one, grinding out wins rather than demolishing opponents. That’s perhaps more agonizing for their opponents, for they give hope and then kill it.
As the game swept past the hour-mark, you could see sparks flaring in the Madrid frontline. Vinicius, after a “bit of scolding” from Carlo Ancelotti, discovered his twinkling feet. A belief-defying nutmeg of Julian Ryerson was a cheeky warning of what was to come. Not a quick kill, but a slow, draining, draining death. Toni Kroos had a brace of curling free-kicks towards the Dortmund goal, repelled acrobatically by Gregor Kobel.
By now even the romantics could sense the inescapable fate flapping its wings. Madrid would soon twist the knife. From an unlikely source, Dani Carvajal, who had a couple of tense moments on the right flank. The right back had lost the searing pace of his youth; he has scored only one goal ever in the Champions League, and 12 in as many top-flight seasons. But he leapt over the yellow wall—a leap of ambition rather—and flicked a brutal header into the nets. It must have felt like a bullet through the heart of Dortmund players. That moment when they saw destiny mocking them. Madrid would close out the game with calm and ease; they were playing walking ghosts in yellow. What followed was extraordinarily harsh on them, but it is also true that they had started to look weary and were not creating any real threat by the point everything began to unravel.
Vinicius would put the match beyond contest, and by now there was a sense of watching a familiar climax unfold. Atletico, Liverpool, Bayern Munich, Chelsea and Manchester City have all felt the pain in the last decade of Madrid supremacy in the Champions League. It’s difficult to think of any team dominating any continental tournament like they have. Then it’s no longer a tournament for Madrid, a quest for glory, but an identity. And you knew how the night would end.