"Madrid's style?" Florentino Pérez was asked. "Madrid's style is to win." Never as in this Champions has the phrase been adjusted more to reality. Because the white team could (should) have been eliminated in March against PSG, in April against Chelsea and in May against Manchester City. But he survived clinging to Courtois and Benzema and stood in the final. He only had one game left to continue feeding his legend of an infallible team when the European Cup is already in sight. And he did not miss his appointment with the paranormal phenomena that accompany him. They haven't lost in a Champions League final since 1981 and neither have Liverpool managed to stop that streak, although they played much more than a closed Madrid. The white team has won the last eight finals of the highest continental competition that it has played. A devastating statistic. Like the one that reflected that when Vinícius scored, the white team only added two shots in the game. See it to believe it, although at this point everything that happens with Madrid can be believed. Rarely has a team with so many limitations managed to overcome rivals of such substance because, unlike in other editions, there were no benevolent draws for the Whites.
It mattered little to Ancelotti's team to be quite inferior because with a huge goalkeeper and with efficiency on one of his very few occasions it was enough to take another Champions League to his mouth.
There comes a time when the precedents weigh on the present because they make the players dressed in white grow and the rivals lose faith when they see how it seems impossible to beat Madrid even if they accumulate the merits to achieve it.
“Now I am on the good side of history,” Courtois said on Friday, recalling that he had lost a final with Atlético to Madrid. What is clear is that he has put a lot on his part to make that statement true because his game against Liverpool was a honor roll. The quote that was used to gloss Germany, that of Gary Lineker who said that football is played eleven against eleven and the Germans always win, can be applied to Madrid with the European Cup. Inexorably. irremediably. Like a divine design. Don't try to understand it, which Marco Asensio tweeted. Can't really understand.
