Vinicius Junior was on the pitch at the Santiago Bernabeu, singing in front of the stadium’s packed South Stand as if he were a fan among them, megaphone in hand.
The match had just ended and Real Madrid came from behind in another extremely dramatic evening.
At Wembley on June 1, Carlo Ancelotti’s side will attempt to win the club’s 15th European Cup/Champions League title. Their remarkable competitive record already places them well ahead of the seven trophies won by AC Milan and the six won by Bayern Munich and Liverpool.
After drawing the first leg 2-2 in Germany, Madrid dominated Bayern in Wednesday’s second leg, but a series of misfortunes left them on the brink of elimination. Until the magic of the Bernabeu reappears.
Joselu’s spectacular double reversed the situation and Madrid came back once again, another ‘comeback’. The celebrations were wild, jubilant and all-encompassing. Everyone was in shock, including the players.
En route to a 14th title in 2022, Madrid completed three spectacular comebacks in the Champions League round of 16, beating Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea and Manchester City to reach the final against Liverpool.
It happened again. How?
“It’s something inexplicable,” manager Carlo Ancelotti said.
Champions League evenings are always occasions to savor at the Santiago Bernabeu and this one is no exception. But from the way the evening started, you could tell there would be something special in store.
When Madrid players left the Valdebebas training ground for the Bernabeu on Wednesday, they were greeted by more than 300 boys and girls from 17 of the club’s youth teams.
They held up a 15 meter long banner at the end of a guard of honor. “Your heart, our badge,” it read.
The team bus was heading towards the stadium, for “Busiana”, a word that does not appear in any official dictionary but already deeply anchored in the collective mind of Madrid supporters.
As they often do in the run-up to important matches, Madrid fans gathered along Avenida de Concha Espina, one of the main thoroughfares leading to the Bernabeu. At 7:30 p.m. local time, 90 minutes before kickoff, thousands of supporters were in attendance as white and purple flares were lit in the intense sunshine.
Smoke filled the ears and made it almost impossible to see anything, until suddenly the horses of the mounted police could be seen cutting through the mist, closely followed by the white bus of the Madrid team .
Coaches and players, who had encouraged fans to gather, filmed footage on their phones and shouted enthusiastically behind the vehicle’s dark windows.
“Si se puede, si se puede (Yes, we can),” fans chanted back.
This is ‘Busiana’, and the same thing happened before City’s visit in the first leg of the quarter-final – when the Premier League side were more feared than Bayern. But it was on a new scale.
The atmosphere persisted inside the field as kick-off approached. “Real Madrid never gives up,” read a sign in the stands. All around the stadium, white and purple banners reappeared and two tifos were deployed, one to the north with the image of the European Cup, another to the south with the Madrid crest.
It was the biggest match held at the Bernabeu since its recent renovation – and the newly installed roof was closed again to help maintain the atmosphere. This has been done by Madrid on several occasions this season – a deliberate policy.
More than 76,000 people sang “Hala Madrid y Nada Mas” (the song in tribute to La Decima, the 10th European Cup won in Lisbon in 2014) before kick-off, their voices echoing and bouncing. This seemed to have the desired effect. Ancelotti’s players were on full blast from the first minutes. They started well at the top – unlike what happened in Munich.
In the 12th minute, Vinicius Jr had already shot against the post and the Bernabeu lamented. In all the excitement and cheering, there was a lot of tension, and the nerves did not calm down as Madrid continued to miss chances, lowering the morale of their supporters.
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The approximately 4,000 Munich supporters, also very noisy despite their situation in the fourth division, sometimes silenced the Bernabeu. Vinicius Jr, who posed a constant threat, called for encouragement from the home support three times in the second half with the game still goalless and the score tied at 2-2 on aggregate.
When the deadlock was broken, after Madrid target Alphonso Davies scored a sensational strike on the counter-attack, the Madrid fans were silenced. There were still over 20 minutes to play but the home side looked somehow short, unlikely to capture the returning spirit of other famous nights as more chances were missed and Nacho’s foul on Joshua Kimmich prevented the equalizer.
Harry Kane almost made it 2-0 for Bayern. Thomas Tuchel’s players began to waste time, throwing themselves to the ground at the slightest opportunity. With a few minutes to go, he turned around.
But momentum was building. The fans hadn’t given up. The scarves were still swirling, the voices were still raised. The Madrid stadium assumed its role of rallying the team until the end. Songs were sung, but sometimes it sounded like a single continuous wave of noise, an indistinct roar as thousands of people increased the volume in unison.
Whatever the work, whatever the method of execution, Joselu has heard the call. And his two goals in three minutes (88th, 91st) triggered the purest madness you could imagine seeing on a football field.
They had started again.
It turned out that Joselu’s late goals weren’t that late – another quarter of an hour was played as injury time was filled with saves. It took so long for Bayern to get their act together, even though they looked totally broken by the equalizer. They even put the ball in the back of the net, even though the offside whistle had already sounded before Matthijs de Ligt’s shot arrived.
At the final whistle, the Madrid players threw themselves to the ground with joy and relief. They couldn’t believe it. No one in the stadium could.
They had started again.
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There was no time to think about the why or how, it was just time to dwell on the glorious magnitude of it all. Vinicius Jr ran straight to the South Stand, where Madrid’s La Grada supporters gather in a distinctive sea of white, and established himself as the master of the party.
His teammates followed him, climbing the billboards to get closer to the fans, swinging so as not to fall. Meanwhile, one of the club’s employees, Alejandro Mori, took out a basket of shirts on which a London bus was depicted with the slogan: “A por la 15” (Here we go for the 15).
Ancelotti, visibly moved, joined the players and supporters to sing the Madrid anthem again.
“They are incredible, they are by far the best in the world,” Jude Bellingham told TNT Sports. “Coming here (to the Bernabeu) is why we overthrow so many games, why when we are down in the first half of the season we always manage to come back in the second half.
“They give you an energy you can’t find anywhere else.”
The crowd remained seated. No one wanted it to end, they were ready to party all night and the team took a victory lap. Antonio Rudiger picked up a plastic chair and handed it to David Alaba – a symbol of the comeback celebrations that took place here in 2022, when the Austrian defender did the same.
“The fans made the difference tonight, as they have many times before. I don’t remember how many times. It seems to be a habit now, what we do. We are delighted,” Ancelotti said during his press conference.
As the Italian spoke, Madrid staff and players were jumping and dancing barefoot in the locker room. They ended their celebration by running hand in hand from one end of the field to the other and back again. Another image to remember.
Later, some of them went to the Bernabeu boxes to reunite with family members, and others went to a nearby restaurant called De Maria, where the party continued.
They were looking forward to celebrating another La Liga title this weekend, with the Champions League on their minds. And now they were in another final. They had started again.
(Top photo: Burak Akbulut/Anadolu via Getty Images)