UEFA and Madrid’s ‘hidden force’
This afternoon we will have a UEFA gala from Istanbul with the awards ceremony from last year and the group stage draw for the imminent Champions League. A great night for Madrid, which on the one hand leads the rebellion against the system, and on the other enjoys the exaltation of its best values.
Through a panel of experts, UEFA has carried out a detailed technical study of all the teams in the Champions League, in search of virtues and defects, but so much squeezing of details does not capture the reality of what happened in the most recent competition and they talk about the ‘hidden force’ of Madrid. That extra something that allows you to get up when you seem finished.
Madrid and Ceferin: conflicting success
It was the Champions League of prodigies, one from which Madrid emerged with the trophy as well as recognition for Benzema as the best player (he scored an outrageous 15 goals in it), Vinicius as the best youngster, and with Courtois and Modric also included in UEFA’s best eleven. So they will monopolize the photoshoots at the gala, in which Ceferin and Florentino will experience opposing successes.
Ceferin has cleared any suspicion about the cleanliness of the competition, since nothing prevented his saboteur from winning it, and the mischief over on-field decision making was not uphelp. As for Florentino, he will feel that this resounding success relieves him of the Super League fiasco.
Real Madrid’s unexplainable force
But let me return to that ‘hidden force’. No one can really know or explain what happened on those days, how Los Blancos were able to call upon their inner Houdini on so many occasions to reach and then win the final. Other times in their long history they also did it, the first five European Cups and those two UEFAs presented episodes like this, but this magical series had never happened before.
That is why the official report, which accumulates so much data, has to finally embrace that ‘hidden force’ that cannot be explained with data or blackboards. The same force that made it different in the years of those first European successes, providing it with a mystique that this latest edition has raised to its all-time highs.