How Real Madrid fuel their perfect Champions League engine with history, belief and arrogance

The players’ knowledge of Real’s unique history, and the nous that is perpetuated by creating more history, means properly established stars perform without doubt; without hesitation

Cristiano Ronaldo embodies what it is to be a Real Madrid player (Getty)

There was absolutely no doubt in Marcelo’s mind, just as there was no doubt within the Real Madrid squad or staff… but not just about the decision that proved the killer blow in that spectacular tie at Bernabeu.

“It was a clear penalty,” the Brazilian had asserted when asked about the moment that eliminated Juventus from the Champions League, before offering the true killer blow, and a wink to go with it. “Obviously what happened to Barcelona [against Roma] wasn’t going to happen to us, because we’re Real Madrid.”

This utter belief is really what everyone else is up against. This is what colours and conditions the entire Champions League campaign.

It is also all the more important this season, because “belief” has appropriately become such a theme of this season, given the sides that have got to the semi-finals. Everyone seems to think they are fated to win it, with that fundamental element driving the four semi-finalists more than ever before.

Those close to the Liverpool camp say there is a “real 2004-05 feel” about the place, with that faith only further fired by Jurgen Klopp’s management and the belief this is “their” trophy. Roma meanwhile believe because of the hope that destiny surely wouldn’t take them this far, and to such emotional extremes, only to crush their dream. Bayern Munich believe because of who they are, and what they’re doing under who they have appointed. There would be such a fittingly symbolic circularity to Jupp Heynckes coming back to immediately win the trophy again.

No one, however, believes like Real do. No one can believe like Real do. No one can lay a claim to this trophy like they can. If it’s anyone’s trophy, it’s theirs.

The sheer arrogance from decades of that success energises the entire club. You can sense it as you walk through the appropriately grandiose surroundings and past appropriately grandly dressed supporters.

They are the opposite of Barcelona in that way, too. While the Catalans have always been undercut by an underlying neurosis about the next potential crisis, something that Johan Cruyff referred to as “the eternal storm”, Real have always been underlaid by an overwhelming assurance.

Cristiano Ronaldo has won three Champions Leagues at Real (Getty)

It is why Marcelo’s comment best explains the club, and this spell of Champions League success, in a way nothing else can.

So much of it does after all seem unexplainable, when you properly consider the facts.

Should Real claim the trophy this season, they will win just the fourth three-in-a-row in history, and the first in 42 years. That would also make it four Champions Leagues in five years, representing the most resounding spell of victories since Real Madrid’s five in a row in the 1950s.

It would afford them a high pedestal in football’s pantheon, and so gloriously bring the club full circle… but at a time when they have so rarely looked fully complete.

It is a distinctive pattern now. They have won so many Champions Leagues despite so many matches where they look so unconvincing. They have won so many Champions Leagues despite being unable to win anything more than one Spanish domestic title in that time.

To go deeper, few can even really explain what Zinedine Zidane does as a manager. When the Real players are asked, they give vague answers about an “aura”, and one figure very familiar with the dressing room described the Frenchman as little more than “a clap-your-hands coach”.

And yet so many seasons end with the ultimate applause, and the trophy that trumps all else in the game.

It is almost as if this arrogance about being the best extends to best practice in football. Real can willingly defy all the supposedly definitive ways to run a team, all of the benefits of ultra-modern coaching systems, because they just put out a team of stars. They’re proving you can still do things the old way.

Toni Kroos controls midfield for Real (Getty) (Getty Images)

You can of course only prove that if you have a lot of old money, and Real are the oldest money in the game. This is the presumptuousness that such wealth brings, but that’s perhaps the point, too.

Real are not just a collection of individual stars, in the way that so many newly wealthy clubs are criticised of representing. They are a collective of players specifically purchased because they match the Real ideals – there are stories of president Florentino Perez refusing to sign individuals because of supposedly “meek” personalities – and thereby further emboldened by those ideals.

The knowledge of that history, and the nous that is perpetuated by creating more history, means properly established stars perform without doubt; without hesitation.

Truly controlling midfielders like Luka Modric and Toni Kroos have been bought for this reason, and because they are capable of imposing a style on the team that is not imposed from above. From there, they have that absolute absence of doubt that is personified by Cristiano Ronaldo. He perhaps perfectly embodies the club in this way, and the tie he won against Juventus seemed the perfect representation of all this.

It was certainly an extreme, as Real were brought to extremes. They have often looked poor in Europe, but rarely this bad. Even Modric and Kroos were misplacing passes. The absence of the commanding confidence of Sergio Ramos was causing chaos in the defence.

It was as if karma was finally catching up with them in the Champions League. Everything that somehow falls right for them was finally falling wrong. And yet… the worst possible elimination, and one what would have been even more of a collapse than Barcelona’s, only ended up producing the best possible feeling; that this is why they are the best.

They did it again.

Such appeals to basic psychology may seem simplistic, but consider what they would mean to a squad like this. Players with supreme belief in their talent are further powered by a supreme confidence in their club, that they will always win. That is a very powerful weapon, especially in knockout games.

Macelo: ‘What happened to Barcelona wasn’t going to happen to us’ (Getty) (Getty Images)

There is none of the doubt or second-guessing that is known to affect a striker like Gonzalo Higuain, someone the club discarded before this run of European glory; the sort of doubt that is likely to bring those fatal slips in the moments that matter.

For all of the criticism of what the modern Real are as an entity, too, this still isn’t a club you could say is disconnected from its fanbase. You would struggle to find a crowd that so reflects its club’s feelings, so radiates that arrogance.

This is not a support that worries. They rightfully expect. A classic piece of anecdotal evidence came in last season’s quarter-final against Bayern Munich, when the German side went even closer to putting Real out than Juventus because they went ahead. You wouldn’t have thought it from those near the international media seats.

“Of course we’ll win,” one well-to-do middle-aged man was heard to say, while smoking a fat cigar. “We’re Real Madrid.”

It was almost too perfect a scene, as was the banner the Bernabeu crowd put up before Wednesday’s game with Juventus. That banner involved the famous image of the shark from Jaws, ominously coming up through the water, with the words ‘Great White’ above it – making the link to that magnificent white kit.

There’s similarly a line from Jaws, delivered by the Richard Dreyfuss character Dr Hooper, that bears repeating. “What we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine. It’s really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat… that’s all.”

What the other three semi-finalists are likely going to have to get past is a perfect Champions League engine, a winning machine. It’s really a miracle of football’s evolution, given how the game has developed. All this machine does in the Champions League is play and win.

It is unencumbered by doubt. It doesn’t have that psychological flaw.


 Zidane’s coaching brings success in Europe 
 (Getty)

Zidane was asked after the Juventus match whether he ever thought they were going out. Of course he didn’t, he said, with no hint that this was something that was easy to say after the fact.

It was easy to say because of the fact of where he is.

This, after all, is Real Madrid.

They don’t need to be more than a club. They’re the ultimate club.