Real Madrid finds a new way to achieve another unthinkable comeback in the Champions League

Real Madrid, somehow, but inevitably, finds a new way to win. I was starting to feel what it must be like to play themselves. And yet, of course, even they surpassed that. Bayern Munich had subjected the Spanish champions to the type of experience that Real Madrid had experienced with so many. They dug in, they got frustrated, out of nowhere they scored a crucial goal amid favorable refereeing decisions.

Then Real Madrid threw everything in, including a supposed substitute. For someone who was supposed to be a mere remedy for Kylian Mbappé, Joselu is instead a new folk hero. He scored in the 88th and 92nd minutes to somehow turn a typical 1-0 loss into an atypical victory for a team that wins more than any other.

It was as if this time they had challenged the power of narrative itself, that’s just how these games are. They are the narrative. They are the history of the modern Champions League. Surely now they will look for a 15th place in the club and a personal fifth for Carlo Ancelotti. Borussia Dortmund will have to come up with something more than Bayern Munich, but Thomas Tuchel seemed to have done well.

This was the oddity of the game. Even his strangest decisions, like taking off Harry Kane and Jamal Musiala with a 1-0 lead, didn’t really matter because Madrid made them irrelevant. They seem to make any opposing forces irrelevant.

About that, what must Kane be thinking? What must Tuchel be thinking? He will be furious after that controversial late offside against Bayern.

What was Manuel Neuer thinking? He had had his best game in years only to be responsible for the mistake that could define the season and more.

Until then he had decided how the game had gone.

Although these teams have faced each other so frequently and offer so many characteristics of the European football we are so familiar with, there was something very different about this game.

It’s not just that Bayern weren’t wearing red, although one might have assumed they were the team wearing white. Real Madrid took the initiative in a way that is not usually seen in Europe. They were creating a lot of opportunities, but also establishing a narrative, although not one that anyone was familiar with.

It was almost immediately. Vinicius was making a lot of holes in Bayern Munich’s defense. That created the space for Rodrygo to cause constant danger. At one point the ball appeared to sit up for a shot, only for Matthijs de Ligt to simply deflect it away. It didn’t matter where. They just had to get rid of it, since the ball had spent a long time around the Bayern goal.

There, however, Neuer showed himself imperious. Although Madrid had tried to trick Bayern with a throw-in, surprising many of their players with a shot higher up the pitch when they thought the ball was in play, the goalkeeper was a player who was extremely alert. Neuer gave the crucial touch to Vinicius Júnior’s low shot to hit the post, and then immediately rose to block Rodrygo’s shot. There was much more of that, as Madrid continued to arrive.

Neuer was supreme, but not impregnable.

The most distressing, and the closest, was another Vinicius-Rodrygo double act. Vinicius once again made the left side of the field his own as he set his own pace, before launching another attractive ball to the other side of the area. Rodrygo, however, could only deflect the ball.

As Madrid itself knows better than anyone, you can’t miss so many opportunities in an important Champions League match without gradually creating more and more risks.

There was also danger from Bayern.

Kane almost passed Leroy Sané and Serge Gnabry on a few occasions. That threat was always there, but they couldn’t get the timing right. A threaded Kane ball required a thunderous run from Nacho.

It seemed that Bayern had denied that crucial exit when Gnabry had to retire injured. Alphonso Davies came in, a supreme player, of course, but who tends to be much more forceful running from the back.

Bayern were being forced to retreat to that point. Rodrygo’s big chance seemed the most extreme. But it wasn’t exactly that a goal was coming, but rather that something was about to happen.

Kane this time had the opening. He played a superb lofted pass for Davies to run on. The Canadian still had a lot to do, with Antonio Rudiger ahead. He did it spectacularly. Davies simply drove forward and then stepped aside, before deflecting a lofted shot into the far corner.

Bayern exploded. In the end it seemed that Real Madrid were doing poorly in this competition and everything they had achieved was coming back to them. It could even be seen in how Nacho’s goal was disallowed. It was just the prelude to something bigger, something even more improbable.

As the game progressed in the 88th minute, a ball hit Neuer. It’s usually the kind of effort he pulls off easily, but there always seems to be a risk in the way he picks up the ball. This time Neuer spilled it like another German goalkeeper, Oliver Kahn, in the 2002 World Cup final. There was Joselu, more than Ronaldo.

Real Madrid can now celebrate him like the great Brazilian. He can go one step further and win a Champions League. He won this game. In the 92nd minute, when Rudiger lost the ball, Joselu did it.

Madrid had somehow done it again, like not even he had managed before.

This is how Madrid wins, they sing in this stadium. Not that way. Of course, it makes it even greater. The same finalists as always, in a new way.