Defeat never tasted so good. At the end of a battle in which both teams had fought and both had bled, in which they had suffered, a huge banner was unfurled. “We give everything to win the cup,” it said, and, boy, had they.
For the first time, Diego Simeone had seen his team lose a Champions League knockout game at home, but it did not matter: instead there was delirium, the club’s anthem belted out louder than ever before. “You don’t know how lovely it is to be among the four best teams in Europe,” he said.
