Records tumble in Real’s triumph
Print Edition
THERE was something magical surrounding this season’s Champions League showpiece even before Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid produced one of the great finals at Benfica’s Stadium of Light on Saturday.
Spanish media estimated 100,000 people made the trip across the border to Lisbon but only around 40,000 of those had tickets to see Real beat Atletico 4-1 after extra time in the first final between two teams from the same city.
“It was a special night, you could just feel something in the air,” Real manager Carlo Ancelotti said. “I was not sure it was so magical when we were losing with time running out, but you felt something magical might happen in this stadium and in this city, and luckily for us it did.”
Real became the first team to score four in a final since the Italians beat Barcelona 4-0 in 1994. It was also the first final since Manchester United beat Benfica 4-1 in 1968 that a side had scored three times in extra time to win the European Cup.
A year earlier, in the only other final to be played in Lisbon before Saturday’s match, Celtic became the first British team to win it when it beat Inter Milan 2-1 at the National Stadium.
Real has now taken part in 13 European Cup finals, and “La Decima”, or 10th victory, followed a familiar pattern. In five of its 10 victories, Real has fallen behind and had to turn matches around to win.
On Saturday, a goal deep into additional time at the end of 90 minutes from Sergio Ramos levelled the scores at 1-1 and sent the game into extra time, where Gareth Bale, Marcelo and Portugal’s current poster boy, Cristiano Ronaldo, scored to give Real victory.
History also repeated itself for Atletico, which suffered heartbreak in its only other final in 1974. Then it lead Bayern Munich 1-0 after Luis Aragones had given it the lead with a free-kick six minutes from the end of extra time. But Munich’s George Schwarzenbeck equalized in the last minute of extra time to give Bayern a 1-1 draw before the Germans won the replayed final 4-0 two days later.
Ancelotti made history of his own by becoming the first man since Liverpool’s Bob Paisley (1977, 1978, 1981) to win three European Cups as a coach. Ronaldo also became the first player to score in regular time for two different winning European Cup teams having netted Manchester United’s goal against Chelsea in 2008.
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