Champions League – Return match – Real Madrid – Arsenal – Noche Magica or how Real persuades himself

On its social networks, Real Madrid has made them sandwiches. In an exercise in style that looks as much like self-person as well as a warning for Arsenal, the Spanish club has published since Monday the reasons in its recent history in the Champions League. Wolfsburg, in 2016 (0-2, 3-0), PSG (0-1, 3-1) then Chelsea (1-3 and 2-3 but with two goals scored at the end of the match by Real) and finally Manchester City (3-4, 3-1), in 2022: the reigning European champions have made a specialty to overthrow the most perilous situations.

Except that it is much more problematic. Last week, Real took three at the Emirates Stadium without scoring one and without having nothing to complain about as the difference in level was obvious. The first great strength of Real is never to doubt. Even when everything fucks the camp, even when hope is thin, he still believes in his destiny. “”If there is one team capable of doing it, it's real“, hammered the Madrid players one by one last Tuesday in the corridors of the Emirates.”Yes, of course we can do it“, had slipped Kylian Mbappé. In the locker room last week, no reduction but the conviction, already furious, that everything was possible.

“If we watch the match tonight, had continued coach Merengue Carlo Ancelotti, We can say that there is almost no chance. But in football there are unpredictable things. No one expected (Declan) Rice scored two goals on a free kick, but he did it. We must believe it, have confidence in ourselves, because sometimes, often, things of this type happen at Bernabéu“He added.

“Unpredictable things“of which Carlo Ancelotti speaks have a name for the Santiago-Bernabéu: the Noche Magica, according to the expression popularized by Jorge Valdano, the former Real striker.”It was surprising because the public believed in the team in a crazy way and the Bernabéu was the instrument to intimidate the rival“, Written Marca a few years ago to explain the phenomenon. An instrument of panic which struggled in the 1980s Anderlecht, Inter and Borussia Mönchengladbach after crazy reasons.

“I heard that a million times since last week, I have seen a million videos, it's really motivating, said a Bellingham Jude inhabited by the mission. It is a night that is made for Real Madrid.“The mysticism of the great memories of Real created a monster. But either, lubricating illusions.

“Tomorrow is an opportunity for us to do something for the first time,” concluded Bellingham. What Real must accomplish therefore exceeds everything that has done in recent years, these crazy lifts or foolish goals in stoppages. If a club can get there, it is above all in front of an arsenal with much less solid DNA and which tends to fold or even break when the stake is too big. A week after the lesson inflicted by the Gunners, Real managed to establish an environment that would suggest that nothing is done. It is a first feat. Sufficient ? Not sure.