Vinicius Junior was down on the Santiago Bernabeu pitch, singing to 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 had come from behind again at their home stadium on another hugely dramatic night.
At Wembley on June 1, Carlo Ancelotti’s team will be looking to win the club’s 15th European Cup/Champions League title. Their remarkable competition record already places them well ahead of AC Milan’s seven trophies and the six won by Bayern Munich and Liverpool.
After drawing 2-2 in the first leg in Germany, Madrid dominated Bayern in Wednesday’s return match, but a series of misfortunes left them on the brink of elimination. That was until the magic of the Bernabeu appeared again.
Joselu’s dramatic late double turned the tie around as Madrid came back once more, another ‘remontada’. The celebrations were wild-eyed, jubilant, all-encompassing. Everyone was in shock, including the players.
On their way to a 14th title in 2022, Madrid performed three dramatic comebacks in the Champions League knockout stages, beating Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea and Manchester City to reach the final against Liverpool.
It happened again. How?
“It’s something inexplicable,” said manager Carlo Ancelotti.
Champions League nights are always occasions to savour at the Santiago Bernabeu and this was no exception, but the way the evening started, you could tell there would be something special in store.
When Madrid’s players left their Valdebebas training ground to travel to the Bernabeu on Wednesday, they were seen off by over 300 boys and girls from 17 of the club’s youth teams.
They held up a 15-metre-long banner at the end of a guard of honour. “Your heart, our badge,” it read.
The team bus was headed for the stadium, for the ‘Busiana’, a word not included in any official dictionary but already deeply ingrained in the collective mindset of Madrid fans.
Just as they often do in the build-up to important games, Madrid fans gathered along the Avenida de Concha Espina, one of the main thoroughfares leading towards the Bernabeu. At 7:30pm local time, 90 minutes before kick-off, thousands of supporters were there as white and purple flares were set off in the intense sunshine.
Smoke filled the air and made it almost impossible to see anything at all, until you could suddenly spot the horses of the mounted police cutting through the mist, closely followed by Madrid’s white team bus.
The coaching staff and players, who had encouraged fans to gather, filmed footage on their phones and shouted excitedly from behind the darkened windows of the vehicle.
“Si se puede, si se puede (Yes, we can),” chanted fans in return.
This is the ‘Busiana’ and the same had happened before City’s visit in the quarter-final first leg — when the Premier League side were more feared than Bayern. But this was on a new scale.
Madrid fans let off flares as the team bus approaches the Bernabeu (Diego Radames/Europa Press via Getty Images)
The mood continued inside the ground as kick-off approached. ‘Real Madrid never give up,’ read one sign in the stands. All around the stadium, white and purple banners appeared again and two tifos were displayed, one in the north end with the image of the European Cup, another in the south end with the Madrid crest.
This was the biggest game held at the Bernabeu since its recent renovation — and the newly-installed roof was again closed to help keep the atmosphere in. This has been done by Madrid several times 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 booming and bouncing back. It seemed to have the desired effect. Ancelotti’s players were at full tilt in the opening stages. They started well on top — in contrast to how it went at Munich.
By the 12th minute, Vinicius Jr had already shot against the post and the Bernabeu was lamenting. In all the excitement and encouragement there was a lot of tension, and nerves did not ease as Madrid continued to miss chances, lowering the spirits of their fans.
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The 4,000 or so Munich supporters, who were also very noisy despite being located up in the fourth tier, silenced the Bernabeu at times. Vinicius Jr, who was a constant threat, asked for encouragement from the home support on three occasions in the second half, with the game still goalless and scores level at 2-2 on aggregate.
When the deadlock was broken, after Madrid target Alphonso Davies scored a sensational strike on the counter attack, Madrid’s fans were silenced. There were still over 20 minutes left to play, but the home side somehow looked short, unlikely to capture the comeback spirit of other famous nights as further chances were missed and Nacho’s foul on Joshua Kimmich meant an equaliser was ruled out.
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 just minutes remaining, it looked over.
But momentum had been building. Fans had not given up. Scarves were still whirling, voices were still rising. Madrid’s stadium took on its role to rally the team until the very end. Songs were being sung but at times it just sounded like a single continuous wave of noise, an indistinct roar as thousands raised the volume in unison.
Whatever the workings, however it was carried, Joselu heard the call. And his two goals in three minutes (88th, 91st) unleashed the purest form of madness you could possibly imagine witnessing in a football ground.
They had done it again.
Joselu celebrates at the Bernabeu on Wednesday night (Helios de la Rubia/Real Madrid via Getty Images)
It turned out that Joselu’s late goals weren’t actually all that late — another quarter of an hour was played as stoppage time was filled with stoppages. It was so long that Bayern rallied themselves, despite having appeared totally broken by the equaliser. They even put the ball in the net — although the whistle had already blown for offside before Matthijs de Ligt’s shot rolled in.
When the final whistle did come, Madrid’s players threw themselves on the floor in utter joy and relief. They could not believe it. Nobody in the stadium could.
They had done it again.
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There was no time to think about the why or the how, it was just time to linger in the glorious scale of it all. Vinicius Jr ran straight to the south stand, where Madrid’s La Grada fans congress in a distinctive sea of white, and made himself the master of the party.
His team-mates followed him, climbing the billboards to get closer to supporters, balancing so as not to fall. Meanwhile, one of the club’s employees, Alejandro Mori, brought out a basket of shirts on which a London bus was depicted with the slogan: ‘A por la 15’ (Let’s go for the 15th).
Ancelotti, visibly moved, joined the players and fans to sing Madrid’s anthem again.
Antonio Rudiger, Ancelotti and Vinicius Jr singing with fans (Jean Catuffe/Getty Images)
“They are incredible, they are the best in the world by far,” Jude Bellingham told TNT Sports. “Coming here (to the Bernabeu) is the reason why we turn so many games around, 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 that you can’t find anywhere else.”
The crowd remained in their seats. Nobody wanted it to stop, they were ready to celebrate all night and the team did a lap of honour. Antonio Rudiger picked up a plastic chair and handed it over to David Alaba — a symbol of the comeback celebrations that took place here in 2022, when the Austrian defender had done the same.
“The fans made the difference tonight, as they have done many times before. I can’t recall how many times. It seems like a habit now, what we do. We are delighted,’ Ancelotti said at his press conference.
While the Italian spoke, members of Madrid’s staff and players were jumping and dancing barefoot in the dressing room. They had finished their celebration by running hand-in-hand from one end of the pitch to another and back. Another image to remember.
Later, some of them went up to the Bernabeu boxes to be with family members, and others went to a nearby restaurant called De Maria, where the party continued.
They had waited to celebrate another La Liga title on the weekend, with the Champions League in mind. And now they were in another final. They had done it again.
(Top photo: Burak Akbulut/Anadolu via Getty Images)
