Thomas Tuchel had demanded a “fantastic script” and boy did he get one, another epic and implausible story unfolding. Just not quite as he had hoped; Real Madrid had rewritten the ending, the way they so often seem to do. “The magic of the Bernabéu,” Carlo Ancelotti called it. It would have been barely believable, except that they had seen it somewhere before. The last time they were here, in fact.
Go back a month. Scribble out where it says PSG and write Chelsea instead. Just don’t touch the mentions of Madrid, the club who have made the impossible feel inevitable. It doesn’t matter if it’s absurd, how bad things are – how bad they are – when that final scene comes, there they are: still standing, rubble all round. Just as you imagined, just as they like it.
