The Madrid of always

With Chelsea's third goal, I shivered as I imagined Gareth Bale walking onto the pitch to level the tie or, worse still, come back from behind.

The joys of others, when Real Madrid is part of the equation, work like this: they last a second and submerge you in a sea of ​​fear, like those fictional characters who find a lost treasure and immediately feel they have to prepare for the worst.

Some may seem absurd, like guessing at a last Welsh revival, but old scars start sending you signals and imagination takes care of the rest.

Even Modric's chimerical pass, now treated as the exception of genius,

The question is no longer so much how they do it but why... Why are the dead made?

Why do they allow themselves to be beaten to exhaustion, like Rocky Balboa, and postpone the resurrection for the last leg of the fight?

Why do they put candy in our mouths and then punch it out of us?

What pleasure do they get from all this?

It is not a formula that always works – they often lose and get eliminated – but at this point no one can deny that it works more often than the rest.

This year, to make matters worse, they seem to carry the cheat sheet well hidden in their arms, waiting for the exact moment when everyone is looking at them to take it out, mark answers with treachery and pass another exam without making too much effort, accustomed as they are to navigating between spring successes and internship summers.

In the semifinals, Manchester City awaits them with a Pep Guardiola who continues to set Madrid on fire no matter what he does, whatever he says, win as he wins.

Only from the most frightening animosity can one understand the corrosive criticism of a second half in which his team did what he could – not what he wanted, because it is not always possible – to pass the tie.

And, by the way, it happened.

The latter is not a minor fact.

After all, we are talking about a city that woke up talking about epic and competitive gene, but went to bed early, at least a part of it, grumbling because the rival on duty gave him a spoonful – just one – of his own medicine.

From so much talk about the "people's team", some have convinced themselves that Simeone trains Bergantiños.

And that could be the main reason why their own merits are not valued as they should, let alone those of the rival.

"We're not that stupid, it's just that maybe we have less lexicon," said the coach at the post-match press conference.

He not only systematically ignores the billion invested by his team in the last decade, or that he is the highest paid coach in the world: now he also seems to have forgotten that he is Argentine!

And that does seem like a very serious resignation to me.

Much more, of course, than rolling up your sleeves and rowing to save a result or earn the chance to pass a new revalidation at the Santiago Bernabéu, which is where the usual Madrid ends and Europe begins.

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