Even the way they won it went by the familiar script. The same old story, if with a few new elements that Real Madrid can crow about. The club’s 15th Champions League is the first they have won at Wembley.
So, the European Cup finally goes from the home of football to the home of this competition – even though they’ve tried to destroy it with a Super League. That was all thanks to Carlo Ancelotti winning a fifth as a manager and another club stalwart becoming a club legend.
In scoring just the 13th goal of his Real Madrid career after 11 seasons, Dani Carvajal sent the club on the way to a 2-0 victory against a spirited but limited Borussia Dortmund. He adds his name to a legacy that includes Alfredo Di Stefano, Paco Gento, Ferenc Puskas, Predrag Mijatovic, Raul, Zinedine Zidane, Cristiano Ronaldo, Vinicius Jr… and if that by this point reads like the mere relaying of a list, that was almost the point.
Madrid barely had to go through the motions to win. Vinicius Jr even got his customary breakaway goal. Jude Bellingham gets his first Champions League medal to make it a double in his first season, even if this was not his finest game. It didn’t need to be.
It was all so inevitable. This time, not even Dortmund could have been fooled by the usual rope-a-dope, the near-cruelty of how Madrid seem to give you a chance.
There is surely now a football phrase due – maybe even a German phrase – for the game’s equivalent of Chekov’s gun. That is a big miss against Real Madrid in a European game that is surely going to be a key part of the narrative later on, particularly after the big turn at the end. By now, everyone could have seen it coming.
That didn’t stop Dortmund from believing, of course. How could they? This is why we’re all here, no matter how predictable it has been allowed to become. There’s always that hope, that sense of maybe.
Dortmund undeniably rose to the occasion. They more than played their part. They just couldn’t raise their level. That was ultimately the issue here. Dortmund shouldn’t be criticised for overperforming by getting this far – even if the club as a whole should very much be criticised for their controversial sponsorship deal with weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall. It should be wrong to be talking about this at what is supposed to be European football’s most prestigious event but that is something else the game has been allowed to become.
It’s also something way above the players. They tried to just play beyond themselves. They did go close.
They did all they could – except score. It was hard not to feel they didn’t ultimately have the quality. There was a kind of an admirable worthiness about their display rather than real class.
Karim Ademeyi almost personified this with how his pure running caused Madrid real problems only for his finishing to let him down. That’s if he got to that point. When put through by Mats Hummels for the first big chance of the game, the winger took the ball too far wide, to completely ruin the opportunity.
This period led to the usual criticisms that Madrid were complacent, that this time might actually be it, that they’d become too sure of themselves.
Obviously not. Dortmund were wasting far too many chances for that.
The closer they got the more certain it felt this was going to go the usual way.
It was almost even more inevitable since Madrid were doing so little. The most that they offered at the other end was Vinicius Jr getting booked for sliding in on Gregor Kobel.
Perhaps Dortmund’s peak was the one moment of real quality in the game. The ball was swept across for Niklas Fullkrug, who threw himself at it with a diving header, only for Thibaut Courtois to prove his equal in acrobatics.
It was of course after that final inconvenience that Madrid just decided to step it up. Toni Kroos, playing his last club game, started to step it up. He took control. Madrid took the chance that Dortmund didn’t.
It even came mere minutes after they finally started creating proper chances. Bellingham had just missed one. Carvajal, of all people, wasn’t going to. From a Madrid corner on 74 minutes, he diverted the ball over Kobel and in. It wasn’t quite Sergio Ramos in 2014 but it was enough, and something a bit new.
That wasn’t from any sense of spectacle but more Madrid come to this fixture so often that it’s almost like different things have to happen by law of averages. A player who doesn’t usually score naturally got one.
There was still the usual flourish, from maybe the best player in the world. Vinicius Jr was put through for his customary goal, in its vintage style.
There were some genuinely touching moments within all of this. Kroos vigorously pumped his fist, relishing his last game – and a sixth personal European Cup. Managers Edin Terzic and Ancelotti had a nice moment on the touchline.
The biggest game in European football should be about more than that, though. There are bigger questions about the game’s direction, especially as this competition becomes an institutionalised Super League next season.
We are so often seeing the same results happen, which is precisely why victories like Bayer Leverkusen’s or Atalanta’s stand out all the more. Their very rarity is becoming a problem.
There was nothing rare about what we saw at Wembley, bar the first scorer.
Madrid just gave us everything we’ve seen so many times, to win this for the 15th time. That is more than double any other club. They have rendered the very records a joke. They rendered this showpiece their own parade.
