There is a time for analysis and a time for emotion. Toni Kroos watched the last 20 minutes of normal time and all of extra-time against Manchester City from a Bernabeu dugout, his legs tired after a long season and far longer career.
His post-match focus did not touch upon Rodrygo’s finishes nor Karim Benzema’s flicked header assist. Six words were enough, replicated in the minds of everyone watching on during a heady late evening in Madrid: “This team is a f**king joke”.
Find anyone who disagrees. Some teams kill you with control, death via a thousand passes. Others beat you with strength or through meticulously prepared strategies that expose flaws you didn’t even know you possessed. Real Madrid are different. Real Madrid kill you with chaos.
This is not just good luck, even if Jurgen Klopp corrected himself on Thursday to point out that fortune plays its part. Once is never, twice is always. Real’s ability to fight back from points of no obvious return have not just defined their own run to the Champions League final; they have made this arguably the best knockout phase in the competition’s modern history.
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In their last-16, quarter-final and semi-final ties alone, Real scored in the 76th, 78th, 80th, 82nd, 90th, 93rd, 95th and 96th minutes of normal or extra-time. They have been European football’s great survivors, hanging in long enough to leave the door open and then throwing themselves at it when time and adversity left them no choice. It’s been a theme in La Liga too, where Real scored 38 per cent of their goals after the 70th minute and registered a goal difference in the last 10 minutes of +17.
But then this is nothing new. In 2016, Zinedine Zidane’s side became notorious for repeatedly winning points in La Liga and the Champions League in “Zona Cesarini”, named after Renato Cessarini, a midfielder who excelled in scoring late goals for Juventus in the 1930s. In their four Champions League final wins between 2014 and 2018, Real scored six goals between the 83rd and 120th minutes. It’s easy to see how this might become psychologically self-fulfilling: we know we can do it and you know we can do it.
How do you prepare to face chaos, if the entire nature of chaos lies in its unpredictability? This week Klopp spoke eloquently on the subject of avoiding the ghosts of “Cesarini time”.
“If you only take the last 10 minutes of Real’s games then you say they are pretty much unbeatable and we have no chance because the comebacks were really special,” Klopp said. “But the games were all longer than 10 minutes. We cannot go into the game and talk about how they are in the last five, 10, two minutes. Thank God there are another 88 minutes before that.”
And he’s right. For all the demons that may surface late on, and for all that Real Madrid will never lie down, Liverpool have better players than Chelsea and fewer psychological hang-ups in the Champions League than Manchester City. The Bernabeu is hardly a terrifying atmosphere for a visiting team, but all three of Real’s mini-miracles came at home. Playing in Paris scratches away a layer of inevitability.
Klopp will also know that there are few better in Europe at avoiding those last-gasp panics. In 50 Premier League and Champions League matches this season, Liverpool have conceded three goals in the last 10 minutes (close to 700 minutes when you factor in stoppage time). Only one of those came since early October, Darwin Nunez’s 83rd-minute goal for Benfica. Given Liverpool held a three-goal advantage in the tie, it was virtually meaningless.
Instead, Liverpool’s recent issue has been conceding goals early, not late: the third minute against Villarreal in the semi-final second leg, against Wolves on the final day and at Villa Park 12 days earlier, the 13th minute against Southampton in between. Given that Real only scored two of their 28 Champions League goals this season in the first 20 minutes, that should provide some comfort to Liverpool. It suggests that Ancelotti prefers his team to settle into matches, probably more likely still in a showpiece final. This is where Klopp must aim to seek an advantage.
And for all the talk of magic, there is a formula to Real Madrid’s glorious chaos: they use experience as a preparatory weapon. Their starting XI for the second leg against Paris Saint-Germain contained seven players aged 29 or over and a central midfield of Toni Kroos and Luka Modric with a combined age of 68.
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In each of their three comebacks, improvement was sparked after the introduction of Eduardo Camavinga (19) and Rodrygo (21) as substitutes. Suddenly subdued control was replaced by flashes and bangs and late runs into the box. Carlo Ancelotti effectively has two teams, the starters and the “break glass in case of emergency” resurgents. Each of those opponents was surprised by their directness.
Liverpool will not be (or shouldn’t be). If Ancelotti reverts to type, with Rodrygo sent on as the game-changer, Klopp knows what to do: tell Robertson to stop crosses from the left, task at least one defender to watch out for attackers dropping off behind the back post, prime Alisson to be proactive in claiming the ball.
The decisive questions are whether Liverpool can avoid getting dragged into chaos and whether they want to be. Their season has been roughly split into supreme control (32 clean sheets in all competitions) and frenzied anarchy – Liverpool have played in five 2-2s, five 3-2 and three 3-2s. With their high defensive line, attacking full-backs and front three, that all makes sense.
But it sets up Saturday night’s final perfectly. We have a scenario of two mini-matches in one, each team playing to their own strengths before flipping the script. For the first hour, Liverpool may embrace their own chaos and Real Madrid will aim to control it. Then, depending on the game state, Ancelotti may turn to chaos while Klopp aims for control. This final, given the history of the two clubs and given its magnitude, needs no hype. But we can be sure of one thing: it will generate its own.
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