Real Madrid beat Liverpool to cap one of the wildest runs in Champions League history.
SAINT-DENIS, France—As Karim Benzema approached the fifth Champions League final of his career, European soccer’s most prestigious showcase no longer held any mysteries for him. He knew the drill: show up, hear the Real Madrid anthem, and roughly two hours later, pick up the trophy.
“You can be lucky once, but that’s it,” said Benzema, who finished the season as the Champions League’s top scorer. “We earned this. We really earned this, because we played big clubs in every round: Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea, Manchester City, and today Liverpool.” Yet coming into this season, Real felt more like a crumbling edifice. The club’s wild and misguided bet on a European Super League had backfired spectacularly. It had just lost La Liga to its crosstown rival, Atletico Madrid. And its two best players since the 2018 departure of Cristiano Ronaldo, Benzema and Luka Modric, were firmly in their mid-30s.
The sense of occasion was dented before the game even began when officials delayed kickoff by 37 minutes due to a bottleneck of predominantly Liverpool fans outside the stadium. European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, said the issue was caused by “thousands of fans who had purchased fake tickets which did not work in the turnstiles.”
But during its wild gallop through the Champions League knockout rounds, Real Madrid underwent a subtle shift. Produce enough miracles and they stop feeling like miracles. Instead, relying on those moments of inspiration simply became Plan A.
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