Ancelotti’s Real Madrid find a new hero in Dani Carvajal to clinch 15th Champions League title

Even the way they won it went by the familiar script. The same old story, if with a few new elements that Real Madrid can crow about. The club’s 15th Champions League is the first they have won at Wembley.

So, the European Cup finally goes from the home of football to the home of this competition – even though they’ve tried to destroy it with a Super League. That was all thanks to Carlo Ancelotti winning a fifth as a manager and another club stalwart becoming a club legend.

In scoring just the 13th goal of his Real career after 11 seasons, Dani Carvajal sent the club on the way to a 2-0 victory against a spirited but limited Borussia Dortmund.


He adds his name to a legacy that includes Alfredo Di Stefano, Paco Gento, Ferenc Puskas, Predrag Mijatovic, Raul, Zinedine Zidane, Cristiano Ronaldo, Vinicius Jr… and if that by this point reads like the mere relaying of a list, that was almost the point.

Madrid barely had to go through the motions to win. Vinicius Jr even got his customary breakaway goal. Jude Bellingham gets his first Champions League medal to make it a double in his first season, even if this was not his finest game. It didn’t need to be.

It was all so inevitable. This time, not even Dortmund could have been fooled by the usual rope-a-dope, the near-cruelty of how Madrid seem to give you a chance.

There is surely now a football phrase due – maybe even a German phrase – for the game’s equivalent of Chekov’s gun. That is a big miss against Real Madrid in a European game that is surely going to be a key part of the narrative later on, particularly after the big turn at the end. By now, everyone could have seen it coming. That didn’t stop Dortmund from believing, of course. How could they? This is why we’re all here, no matter how predictable it has been allowed to become. There’s always that hope, that sense of maybe.

Dortmund undeniably rose to the occasion. They more than played their part. They just couldn’t raise their level. That was ultimately the issue here. Dortmund shouldn’t be criticised for overperforming by getting this far – even if the club as a whole should very much be criticised for their controversial sponsorship deal with weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall. There was nothing rare about what we saw at Wembley, bar the first scorer.

Madrid gave us everything we’ve seen so many times. No 15 is more than double any other club. They have rendered the records a joke.

They rendered this showpiece their own parade.