At what point, exactly, does the relentlessly unpredictable start to become oddly routine? As ever, this was an absolute nut‑show of a football match inside Real Madrid’s steamy Centre Court‑style megadrome.
Every ex-Stoke, Newcastle and Eintracht Frankfurt journeyman has his day. And this was the day of Joselu, Madrid’s 34‑year‑old own-brand Benzema, who scored with two of his first three touches in the final moments of a Champions League semi-final to turn 1-0 down into 2-1 up and another final for these irresistible power-meringues.
That will be the tableau, the montage edit, the five‑thousand‑word deep-dive backstory on the Joselu I knew, Deep Joselu from Stuttgart to Madrid to the Potteries and now to London. There will of course be much talk of magic and witchcraft and theatre, the continuing inexplicable voodoo success of the world’s wealthiest football club, who somehow just keep on doing it against the head.
But for all the eerie background music, the most important part of this game was the cold hard and entirely logical brilliance of Vinícius Júnior, who was the best player on the pitch, and who for 20 minutes at the start of the second half took Joshua Kimmich into the deepest and darkest of places.
These Champions League semi-finals have offered up a flip chart of coming stars and next-in-lines, the Ballon d’Or curious. Through Bellingham-Kane-Mbappé only Vinícius has produced the best of himself, playing at the Bernabéu not just with focus and energy, but with a startling sense of freedom, even at this level is still able to play in the true sense of the word, to be inventive and spontaneous, to enjoy himself.
Vinícius may end up winning the Ballon d’Or from here, on the back of nights like these. Certainly, it is hard to think of a more incisive and illuminating attacking player this season. By the end here he had five shots, seven dribbles, six crosses, and the scalp of Bayern Munich’s entire right side flapping from his belt. He also produced that sustained spell both of individual brilliance between the 46th and 68th minutes, during which Vinícius basically tortured Kimmich, forcing him at one point to basically fall over and grab the ball, looking for a way to just make it stop.
You don’t hear much about the controlled and very deliberate freedom of Real Madrid, the way their attack is empowered to essentially make up the play, to bunch together in a revolving white combination punch. This is the beauty of Carlo Ancelotti’s tactics, a shift from the rigid, systemic, positional play of the Pep era of coaches, into a kind of celebrity freedom of expression.
Vinícius is the player who makes it work. Here he did terrible things to Kimmich. Is there a more nightmarish experience in football than this right now, a jazzed-up Vinícius in front of the white wall at that end, relentless and wonderfully precise, head up, brain whirring? For a while Vinícius seemed to be having a personal duel not with Kimmich, who was basically a piece of staging, a beaded curtain to be swished aside impatiently, but with Manuel Neuer in the Bayern goal.
As times in those moments Bayern seemed pretty vague, a team trying to look like a team. The entire attacking threat is basically Harry Kane doing his Spurs greatest hits, the drop and spin and pass for the quick man stuff. Madrid did block those angles, Toni Kroos swarming around Kane, gumming up the passing lanes. Why has it taken so long? Why don’t other teams do this? Again, the clarity of Ancelotti’s tactical plans.
Kane had two touches of the ball in the opening 20 minutes. Antonio Rüdiger was all over him. This is how he plays when he knows you’re a threat, like he’s trying to get inside your skin and walk around. It’s an act of flattery really.
But Bayern still took the lead. The counterattack looked at first like an attempt just to draw a breath, to let the lactic acid fade. Kane produced a lovely back‑spun looped pass to Alphonso Davies galloping down the left, a pass that would become an assist as Davies took five quick touches, the last of them a wonderful curling shot inside the far post.
Bayern began to Bayern, to hang on, to assert their own stubborn charisma. Madrid lost their patterns with Vinícius on the left hand side. But both late goals still came from there, the last one made by Rüdiger.
Joselu, who is, incidentally, 34 and from Stuttgart, pounced for both goals. This was his night because it is just a wonderful story. But those 20 minutes in the Vini zone were the most sustained moment of quality, and also the true base note of this Real team, the science, the clarity, the planning that hides behind the magic and lights.
