Real Madrid eye statement Champions League victory amid shifting landscape of European football

There has been one message that Florentino Perez has been especially keen to convey ahead of Real Madrid’s 17th Champions League final. That is to show Kylian Mbappe what he is missing.

The announcement of the French star’s signing ahead of a Paris final was intended to be a key part of the club’s build-up, fostering an even greater feeling that glory was inevitable. That was scuttled, and it has left the club scrambling – not least for a new signing.

Carlo Ancelotti is too much of a football man for such machinations, and too focused on his team, but he has told Perez it’s just one more setback to be overcome. That fits a theme, that the manager so pointedly asserted after the semi-final.

“I don’t think anybody – anybody – thought Madrid would play another Champions League final this season,” Ancelotti said, in a rare show of strong emotion. “And we’re there.”

That’s no empty statement, or a Jose Mourinho-type attempt to talk up his own impact. It’s true.

Very little about Madrid’s season suggested they would get this far. Very few people thought otherwise – not least Perez. He has at various points been preparing to use Champions League elimination as an excuse to sack Ancelotti at the end of the season. That was still a prospect right up to the second leg against Manchester City.

The Italian is after all a manager that no other big club had wanted at this point of his career, who had been brought in from Everton last summer, because no other acceptable name was available. He has also been overseeing a squad very much in transition, as evidenced by the absence of any key players who are in the prime of their careers. Madrid are a mix of some promising talent and ageing stars, with the two best players aged 34 and 36, respectively.

It is undeniably a worse team than they had in 2018. Only further reflecting this regression, there is the fact they were never considered the favourites in any of their knock-out ties. That was often the case right up to the final few minutes of the games, of course.

It is something else that is so symbolic about this run. Madrid faced all of what Perez describes as “the petroclubs” – Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea, City – whose financial superiority has pushed the club president into the Super League plan. That farce of a project should make Madrid more hard to warm to than ever and yet – as Ancelotti might put it – there they were, beating them all in inspiringly epic circumstances.

It has meant the story of this Champions League season, by far, has been the defiance of Madrid.

That is a very distinctive type of defiance, too, driven by two different identities.

On one side, there is obviously Madrid’s idealised image of themselves, as the Champions League royalty. This is their throne, their rightful place. This was something that Ancelotti so deftly got Karim Benzema to transmit at half-time of the second leg against Paris Saint-Germain.

It was a rare moment when the French star decided to speak in front of the squad. Benzema told his teammates to keep focused, and keep attacking.

“Because PSG will panic,” the forward astutely said. “We’ve seen it before.”

Benzema was well aware that PSG’s own Champions League history was based on failure, which meant their players feared defeat, while Madrid – as always – believed they could win. It was much the same with City in the semi-finals. The contrast went a long way to setting the decisive psychology of the ties.

And yet this overarching defiance was necessarily driven by an unprecedented sense of Madrid as underdog.

That was made so clear, in a remarkable spectacle of its own, in the two hours before the semi-finals. Tens of thousands of Madrid fans gathered around the Bernabeu early to greet the team bus, in a very visible show of the club’s historic status as giants, but began chanting a refrain that is the preserve of Spain’s smaller teams.

“Si se puede.”

Yes, we can.

Xural.com