Borussia Dortmund 0-2 Real Madrid (Carvajal 74’, Vinicius 83’)
Real Madrid will always find a way. They are champions of Europe for a 15th time, and while for Borussia Dortmund there will be little sense of poetic justice, it is no accident that Carlo Ancelotti’s perennial winners are the most inevitable and potent force in the history of the Champions League.
Dortmund will be haunted by their failure to capitalise on a dominant first hour, abandoning from the off the aspiration only to contain. When they were finally undone, Dani Carvajal leapt up to meet Toni Kroos’ corner, beating Niclas Fullkrug to the header for his first goal in this competition in five years.
The trophy had been placed carefully upon its Wembley podium by Zinedine Zidane before kick-off, the greatest No 5 Real Madrid have ever had. The expectation was that the shirt’s latest incumbent, Jude Bellingham, would define the greatest occasion of his short career so far.
Bellingham finished the night with an assist, but it was Dortmund’s Ian Maatsen to whom goalscorer Vinicius Jr owed the true debt. Maatsen did not quite lose the final when he played the ball across his own goal into the path of Bellingham, who with the deftest of passes teed up Vinicius, but he finally put it beyond the reach of the team who had set the pace for so long.
The chances Dortmund did not take will be recalled again and again. There seemed a stutter before Karim Adeyemi realised he was onside and through on goal, flinching at an on-rushing Thibaut Courtois and choosing the wrong way. The touch was too heavy, and by the time Carvajal had got back, the threat was extinguished. Fullkrug rattled the post as Courtois’ goal came under siege, but the goal simply would not come – and when it did, in the final throes, Fullkrug was offside.
If the plan was to prevent Madrid from gaining any momentum at all, three pitch invaders within the first two minutes did that for them. This was the ground at its most secure, even after a £5m operation to turn the national stadium into an impenetrable fortress.
Those German supporters who marched in a yellow wall down Wembley Way in pursuit of the “dream” – in the words of manager Edin Terzic – could not have envisaged a first half of such wanton opportunity. The gap which separates Dortmund from the super-clubs grows year on year, and it gave this showpiece a once-in-a-generation feel; it is 11 years since they last got here and the new format will make it difficult to ensure it is not 11 more.
Madrid initially struggled with no focal point to whom they could turn. Part of the reason Bellingham has enjoyed such success in front of goal in his debut season in La Liga is that more opportunities have fallen to him in the absence of a focal point since Karim Benzema’s departure. The 20-year-old Englishman could not hold back tears at the final whistle.
On a night of goodbyes to so many – Kroos, Marco Reus, even the Champions League as we know it in its current format, Dortmund will rue that they could not deliver the send-offs they hoped at the end of a remarkable campaign.
Julian Ryerson had done so much to thwart Vinicius – and when it was not Ryerson, it was Mats Hummels, veteran of the 2013 Champions League final defeat to Bayern Munich at Wembley. How he had hoped for the story to be different this time.
Vinicius could perhaps count himself lucky to still be on the pitch, booked for lunging in on goalkeeper Gregor Kobel and minutes falling theatrically to convince the referee – wrongly – that he had been fouled by Nico Schlotterbeck, who himself ended up seeing yellow.
Dortmund will be haunted by this defeat. The sight of Vinicius, the ball at his right foot, gliding through the smoke of the Dortmund fans’ pyrotechnics, was almost ghostly. So too was the spectre of Bellingham not making contact with a header just yards from goal.
If neither of them ends the year with a Ballon d’Or, it will be by just as narrow a margin.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/IfTpCHd
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