Jude Bellingham saw the videos, listened to the stories and heard the word remontada “a million times”, but it was easier said than done. “There is no magic,” Carlo Ancelotti warned. In the end there was nothing really, just another glimpse of reality, the true story of their season: a chronicle of a death foretold. No epic, no comeback, not even much mystique, and certainly not much football. This time, Real Madrid could not escape themselves.
“This is the other side of football,” Ancelotti said after the match. “There’s a happy part, which we have experienced many times, and a sad part which is today. We have to accept it, and the ‘sticks’, the criticisms, that will come. Over the two games Arsenal were better than us.”
