This is the end. For Real Madrid, the best thing that could be said about their last game of the 2024-2025 season was that it was their last game of the 2024-2025 season. So in the makeshift marquee set up by the MetLife Stadium, Xabi Alonso said exactly that, and repeatedly. He had watched his team, who aren’t entirely his team yet, be taken apart by Paris Saint-Germain; now he wanted to get home and “reset”, forget about it. Well, not forget exactly: the hurt might help, lessons learned. “I want this to have an impact but not drag us down,” he said. “In August we start 2025-26, which will be different.”
The way they fell was familiar, back to their recent past, their reality. “We suffered the way others have suffered against them,” Alonso said, and that was true, but it is not only PSG; it is Madrid too. This was their 68th game of the season and their 15th loss. They won only the Uefa Super Cup, a world away now, and the Intercontinental Cup against Pachuca in Qatar. In the league, Barcelona beat them twice, scoring four each time. In the cup, Barcelona put three past them; in the Super Cup, five. Arsenal scored three in the Champions League. PSG stopped at four because they didn’t need more.
