Why am I more nervous every year? The question was asked himself last Wednesday by a senior manager of Real Madrid. A response was also given. Not only does football not operate like other areas of life, but sometimes it does the opposite. A surgeon, after a hundred operations, is less nervous than the first time, when everything is new and his hands may shake: we want to trust that surgeon with our lives before the newbie because experience matters. And in football? In football, experience also matters but in reverse: the more accumulated experience you have, the more you are aware of the chaos, the disorder, the absolute lack of control that governs a football match or a competition, sometimes resolved by a matter of seconds or millimeters, resolved even many months before you are going to play that game. You know: the flapping of a butterfly’s wings produces a small vibration in the air that, chaining together various variations, can end up forming a tornado in another corner of the world.
For example, Vallecas. If Rayo Vallecano forward, Raúl de Tomás, had not scored a penalty against Lunin in February during the League, would Madrid be in the Champions League final? That day, as EL PAÍS reported, Raúl de Tomás shot through the center and scored. But Luis Llopis, goalkeeping coach, had signaled to Lunin that he should stay still for that penalty. “A goalkeeper listens to the instructions of those who studied the pitchers, but they can’t stand it when you tell them to stay still. Because the ball can pass to their side and they look like idiots standing there,” says a Madrid manager. Lunin threw himself to the side on that penalty. Lunin, when Kepa and Llopis warned him that Bernardo Silva in the European Cup quarterfinals would surely shoot to the center, did not dare to go on his own: if he jumped and went for the center, again, and missed again… This time, better to pay attention. If he had listened in Vallecas, perhaps in Manchester he would have had more confidence in himself, and that confidence would have kept Madrid in the Champions League. Soccer is a diabolical game. Hence the significance of the fact that Madrid, in the last decade, has managed to govern in an implausible way over that chaos made of elections that do not belong to it in parties so far removed from the decisive ones.
The Madrid expedition plane left 40 minutes later than the scheduled time, 5:40 p.m., from Adolfo Suárez-Barajas airport in the direction of Luton, from where it traveled to The Grove hotel, a British countryside 30 kilometers from Wembley, away from the hustle and bustle. from central London. The squad has been filled with Borussia Dortmund videos in recent days. One after another, in each training session. Defensive and offensive movements of the German team, strategy plays, tactical changes in the middle of the game, most dangerous players and how to neutralize them. The president of Madrid, Florentino Pérez, spoke to the players the day before in Valdebebas to remind them that the Champions League, for Real Madrid fans, is the culmination of a dream; The coach, Carlo Ancelotti, will say this Friday in London something that the players whisper in private groups, a growing discomfort with those media who, according to them, have sold the idea that it is an easy final, that Borussia is not a rival , and fewer wolves. “It’s not the press that loves us,” says a club spokesperson. “It is the press that is bothered that we have reached the final and tries to take away its value. And the message from Madrid, and the message from the coach to the squad tomorrow (Friday) will be: we are not buying it, another dog with that bone.”
In Madrid’s expedition, another final called easy the day before was remembered this Thursday: that of Bayer Leverkusen in Glasgow. “And Casillas, the substitute goalkeeper, saved us in the final minutes,” says a member of the technical team. “A Champions League final is, simply, the most difficult game of the year. The one that is most difficult to reach. And a team has arrived that has beaten Atlético and PSG, which is a great team, and that will beat us if we are careful. No trust and all the alarms turned on.” The atmosphere on the plane, on which this journalist was invited by Madrid, testified to it: silence and concentration among the players beyond a few photos when they arrived at their seats to go online. In T-4 of Barajas, on the way to the boarding gates to London, one after another the 14 Champions on the ground with the date and place of the final.
One man attracted all eyes: Jude Bellingham. The former Borussia Dortmund star wears Zinedine Zidane’s number 5 at Real Madrid today. He weighs the history, weighs the shield and weighs the mystique, but Bellingham, the 20-year-old boy with clear ideas, said privately a couple of nights ago that he will not celebrate a goal. Not even in the Champions League final? They asked him. “No”. Not even if the goal is in the last minute? “Neither. Borussia was my club,” he said, smiling. On the bus on the way to the hotel, Álvaro Arbeloa receives the information pragmatically: “I hope I don’t celebrate three.”
Everything indicates that Courtois will play after Lunin’s untimely (untimely?) B flu. Ancelotti was faced with an infernal dilemma: keep the goalkeeper who has contributed decisively to Madrid being in the final, or the best goalkeeper in the world already recovered and sharpened after his long injury. He won’t have to make the decision he probably would have made anyway.
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