This may have done no more than delay the inevitable and no one truly believes in a miracle, but suddenly there was a roar, a release, some life at the Santiago Bernabéu. The day before, Carlo Ancelotti had talked about the many wonderful comebacks over his years at Real Madrid, moments he said would never be forgotten, and now here in his penultimate game in this stadium was another, the 20-year-old centre-back Jacobo Ramón scoring with the last touch of the game to defeat Real Mallorca and keep the league title alive for another day at least.
It came late, very late on a grey, wet Wednesday night in front of perhaps 30,000 empty seats, with a manager whose departure was announced two days earlier and with a dozen players missing. Ultimately it may not matter and it arrived at the end of an evening that had often felt empty. Yet now it was full of noise, it meant the world to Ramón and for a moment everyone could just go wild, the defender’s strike in the 95th minute and Kylian Mbappé’s goal a quarter of an hour earlier overturning Martin Valjent’s 11th-minute opener.
