A look at how Real Madrid achieved the ominous task of successfully defending Champions League title
By Rory Smith
Real Madrid's original Galácticos, that glittering collection of talent, could not do it. Neither could the Dream Team that Johan Cruyff built in Barcelona, Spain, in the 1990s, nor its spiritual heir, constructed by Pep Guardiola and fueled by Lionel Messi, two decades later.
Several iterations of Bayern Munich, Juventus, Manchester United and AC Milan, teams regarded as among the best of their age, of this age, fell short only narrowly, but fall short they did. Louis van Gaal’s Ajax came closer than most, only to see glory snatched away by penalties.
For the first 25 years after the European Cup morphed into the Champions League, nobody was able to retain the title. It had come to be seen as the final frontier, soccer’s ultimate honor, the feat that would separate the immortal from the merely great.
On Saturday here in Cardiff, the current incarnation of Real Madrid at last broke through the barrier.
This Real Madrid did not need to win another Champions League to have its place in history. It had won two of the last three competitions, beating its fierce rival, Atlético Madrid, in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2014 and again, on penalties, in Milan last year.
But in sweeping past Juventus, 4-1, on Saturday, thanks to two goals from Cristiano Ronaldo and one each from Casemiro and Marco Asensio, the team turned its recent primacy into something more lasting, something approaching hegemony. In time, this will be remembered as Real Madrid's era.
The nature of the era, though, seems harder to discern. Those teams that live longest in soccer’s communal memory tend to define, or be defined by, something — their legacy endures partly because of what they come to represent. They offer a blueprint that others might, in their own way, follow. They do not simply conquer the game. They change it, too.
Trying to pinpoint the meaning of this Real Madrid team, though, is to grasp at smoke. Recently, the academic Steven G. Mandis published a book called "The Real Madrid Way." It purported to extrapolate the values that led to the team’s relentless success.
It caught many in Europe, particularly within soccer, by surprise. There appears, after all, to be no overarching philosophy deployed by Florentino Pérez, the club's president, to build a team, and no style of play that Zinedine Zidane, its coach, has instilled in his players. On the surface, its success offers no lessons.
Indeed, it can seem to be quite the opposite. Real Madrid is the antithesis of much of modern soccer’s dominant thinking. This is an age in which concept is king. Soccer craves those coaches who see themselves as representatives of some higher idea, and it lionizes teams that claim to have discovered a revolutionary system, whether on the field or in the transfer market.
Real — almost alone now — scorns it all. The best example is the player who scored the crucial second goal in Cardiff, the one that broke Juventus' spirit and drained its resolve: Casemiro, a generally unspectacular Brazilian defensive midfielder, but the sort beloved of coaches searching for balance.
If Pérez had his way, Casemiro wouldn't play. The Real president, in fact, once advised Rafael Benítez, Zidane's predecessor, to exclude him from a vital Clásico against Barcelona. His thinking was simple: Casemiro doesn't sell enough jerseys and rarely brings the fans to their feet, so he cannot be especially important. Real was duly beaten, and Benítez eventually fired. One of Zidane's first acts was to bring Casemiro back to the team.
At first glance, then, it'd be easy to assume that Real Madrid's victories don't stand for something more, don't represent some greater truth. They aren't victories for a belief or a system. They're simply victories for Real Madrid, and that's all that Real Madrid cares about.
This Real Madrid for a simplicity that jars at a time when soccer is in thrall to complexity; for the cold truth that if you put 11 extremely talented players on a field, they are capable of remarkable things; that if you gather enough excellence together, it concentrates, ferments, becomes exponentially more potent — capable of overcoming any hurdle. It represents the fact that, at heart, when the miasma of theorizing and extrapolating and intellectualizing clears, soccer is a simple equation, one in which the team with the best players generally wins.
Real Madrid's original Galácticos, that glittering collection of talent, could not do it. Neither could the Dream Team that Johan Cruyff built in Barcelona, Spain, in the 1990s, nor its spiritual heir, constructed by Pep Guardiola and fueled by Lionel Messi, two decades later.
Several iterations of Bayern Munich, Juventus, Manchester United and AC Milan, teams regarded as among the best of their age, of this age, fell short only narrowly, but fall short they did. Louis van Gaal’s Ajax came closer than most, only to see glory snatched away by penalties.
For the first 25 years after the European Cup morphed into the Champions League, nobody was able to retain the title. It had come to be seen as the final frontier, soccer’s ultimate honor, the feat that would separate the immortal from the merely great.
On Saturday here in Cardiff, the current incarnation of Real Madrid at last broke through the barrier.
This Real Madrid did not need to win another Champions League to have its place in history. It had won two of the last three competitions, beating its fierce rival, Atlético Madrid, in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2014 and again, on penalties, in Milan last year.
But in sweeping past Juventus, 4-1, on Saturday, thanks to two goals from Cristiano Ronaldo and one each from Casemiro and Marco Asensio, the team turned its recent primacy into something more lasting, something approaching hegemony. In time, this will be remembered as Real Madrid's era.
The nature of the era, though, seems harder to discern. Those teams that live longest in soccer’s communal memory tend to define, or be defined by, something — their legacy endures partly because of what they come to represent. They offer a blueprint that others might, in their own way, follow. They do not simply conquer the game. They change it, too.
Trying to pinpoint the meaning of this Real Madrid team, though, is to grasp at smoke. Recently, the academic Steven G. Mandis published a book called "The Real Madrid Way." It purported to extrapolate the values that led to the team’s relentless success.
It caught many in Europe, particularly within soccer, by surprise. There appears, after all, to be no overarching philosophy deployed by Florentino Pérez, the club's president, to build a team, and no style of play that Zinedine Zidane, its coach, has instilled in his players. On the surface, its success offers no lessons.
Indeed, it can seem to be quite the opposite. Real Madrid is the antithesis of much of modern soccer’s dominant thinking. This is an age in which concept is king. Soccer craves those coaches who see themselves as representatives of some higher idea, and it lionizes teams that claim to have discovered a revolutionary system, whether on the field or in the transfer market.
Real — almost alone now — scorns it all. The best example is the player who scored the crucial second goal in Cardiff, the one that broke Juventus' spirit and drained its resolve: Casemiro, a generally unspectacular Brazilian defensive midfielder, but the sort beloved of coaches searching for balance.
If Pérez had his way, Casemiro wouldn't play. The Real president, in fact, once advised Rafael Benítez, Zidane's predecessor, to exclude him from a vital Clásico against Barcelona. His thinking was simple: Casemiro doesn't sell enough jerseys and rarely brings the fans to their feet, so he cannot be especially important. Real was duly beaten, and Benítez eventually fired. One of Zidane's first acts was to bring Casemiro back to the team.
At first glance, then, it'd be easy to assume that Real Madrid's victories don't stand for something more, don't represent some greater truth. They aren't victories for a belief or a system. They're simply victories for Real Madrid, and that's all that Real Madrid cares about.
This Real Madrid for a simplicity that jars at a time when soccer is in thrall to complexity; for the cold truth that if you put 11 extremely talented players on a field, they are capable of remarkable things; that if you gather enough excellence together, it concentrates, ferments, becomes exponentially more potent — capable of overcoming any hurdle. It represents the fact that, at heart, when the miasma of theorizing and extrapolating and intellectualizing clears, soccer is a simple equation, one in which the team with the best players generally wins.