In every walk of life, there are people whose greatest gift is being the most confident person in the room. They succeed and you can never quite work out why. What is it they actually do? Is it anything beyond just looking the part? Real Madrid have just won the Champions League for the 14th time.
It can’t just be luck. There has to be more to it than that. And yet in every game in the knockout phase of this Champions League, against Paris Saint-Germain, against Chelsea, against Manchester City, they have had fewer shots than their opponents. On Saturday, Liverpool had 24 shots to Madrid’s four. The only difference between the final and what had gone before was that this time there was no point at which Liverpool apparently had the game won, and Karim Benzema didn’t score.
