Real Madrid and Juventus will play the final of the 2017 Champions League in June in the Welsh capital Cardiff after the Merengues overcame a wild Atletico Madrid 4-2 on aggregate, losing 2-1 on the night. Atletico played with a brave-heart attitude, but the European champions didn’t wilt. They resisted a quick-fire assault, settled down and controlled the match. Here are the three main talking points:
Zealous Atletico Madrid transformed
This Champions League knockout phase has been an assault on plenty of dogmas and cliches in the beautiful game, an enjoyable round-robin of topsy-turvy games, speckled with stardust, intrigue and novelty. Leicester City prolonged their fairytale, Barcelona astonished with a great escape against Paris Saint-Germain, and Monaco thrilled with a team of bright boys.
It was refreshing – the European Cup had been at a crossroads this season as the familiarity with, and the dominance of the spangled clubs began to breed a sense of contempt, an aversion towards the greatest matches football has to offer.
At the Vicente ‘Caulderon’ stadium, city rivals Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid offered more superlative football. Could Atletico pull of a great feat of escapology and succeed after AS Monaco had failed against their more illustrious rivals Juventus on Tuesday?
Atletico began with a glorious intensity to the match. They were no longer the strangely disjointed team from the first leg. Coach Diego Simeone had hyped up his players. They were zealous zealots, playing with a mild insanity, slightly demented by the idea of succumbing to their neighbors again. An early one-two punch made a comeback feasible.
First, on 12 minutes, Saul Niguez powered a header in from a corner kick. Then, on 16 minutes, Raphael Varane fouled Fernando Torres in the box. Antoine Griezmann stepped up and fumbled his penalty. It wasn’t a good spot kick – not high, not low and not hard, almost a textbook example of how not to convert a penalty. The Frenchman’s standing foot seemed to slip from under him, the result was a badly executed penalty. In slow-mo style, Keylor Navas flapped at it. Even a blindfolded hedgehog would have parried the ball, but Navas didn’t.
And so, Atletico pushed on in search of an impossible comeback, a team galvanised and so tangibly different from a subdued and poor performance last week at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium.
Cool Real Madrid remain composed
Madrid were rattled and disjointed. The hosts, however, couldn’t maintain their scorching pressure and pace. At the half-hour mark, the pace dropped in the match. There were plenty of flash points, as Atletico played with vigour and were street-smart like their Argentinean coach demands of his players, but Turkish referee Cuneyt Cakir controlled proceedings, if only just.
Real regrouped. They enjoyed 70% of possession and that translated into Isco’s goal in the 42nd minute. If the Spaniard was at the end of Kroos’s attempt, Benzema was the goal’s architect. He was cornered by three opponents, but escaped with a combination of skill and physicality. The striker demonstrated sublime footwork.
Real are the defending champions and they showed why. They didn’t panic and worked their way back into the game, plundering that vital away goal. Atletico were now required to score another three goals to progress.
The second half became a formality. Atletico had chances, but Zidane’s team sucked the tempo out of the game with prolonged spells of possession. They stood as a block. Isco proved to be a scourge again for Atletico. He drifted around, dropped deep to pick up balls and surged forward with galactic elegance. Benzema and Isco had combined to kill Atletico’s dream.
As the inevitable end neared, a torrential downpour and thunderstorm transformed the Calderon into a biblical theater. Perhaps the raindrops were just tears from the God, mourning the last European Cup night at the iconic and soon-to-be-razed venue and Atletico’s defeat, who even at the height of their potency under the ever-impressive Simeone, remain inferior to Real.
Cardiff will host a blockbuster final
Madrid march on to the final and may become the first team to win the Champions League, in its current incarnation, twice consecutively. Apart from their galactic traits and the omnipresent danger of Cristiano Ronaldo, Madrid have a steely core and much resilience. At times they have combined the brilliant with the abysmal, the glittering with the mundane, and the superlative with the unexceptional, but Zidane’s XI deserve to be in the final.
They have proven to be the best team in the Champions League – together with Juventus, their opponents in the final on June 3. In 1998, both clubs met in the final in Amsterdam, and Pedrag Mijatović’s 66th-minute strike proved to be decisive for Real. Zidane played in Juventus’s midfield and picked up a loser’s medal.