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Real Madrid have engineered some unlikely comebacks in their own back yard over the years - Getty Images/Javier Soriano
It started almost immediately after the final whistle. While Arsenal’s players and supporters were luxuriating in their extraordinary 3-0 first leg victory over Real Madrid last week, their opponents were already invoking the spirit of the Santiago Bernabéu.
“We are going to need something special to turn it around,” said Real Madrid and England midfielder Jude Bellingham, minutes after the match had ended. “But special things can happen in football. If there is one place where it can, it’s at our house.”
Around the same time in north London, Bellingham’s team-mate Lucas Vázquez was making similar comments. “If there is any team that can turn this around, it’s us,” he said. “In front of our home fans at our ground.”
And then Carlo Ancelotti, the Madrid manager who knows so much about special nights in the Champions League, said of overturning the three-goal deficit: “Stranger things have happened at the Bernabéu.”
This, then, is the task facing Arsenal on Wednesday night. When Mikel Arteta’s players walk out on to the grass, they know they will be facing so much more than 11 footballers in white shirts. At the Bernabéu, they must also defeat a mystique and an aura that has defined Madrid’s unmatched success in Europe’s premier competition.
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Real Madrid have won the European Cup a staggering 15 times - Getty Images/David Ramos
Supporters of Madrid would call it the power of the Bernabéu, described recently by president Florentino Pérez as a place where “impossible dreams come true”. The club’s detractors, and indeed those who have experienced improbable defeats at this stadium, might use different terminology. On social media, supporters often describe it as the Bernabéu’s “dark magic”.
Could it really be some sort of witchcraft, or sorcery? It does not matter. What matters is that the Madrid players and supporters evidently believe in the psychological effect of their stadium, and in their ability to conjure miraculous footballing escapes within it. Much like Liverpool’s European history at Anfield, it has become one of the great self-fulfilling prophecies of the game.
In many ways, it would be stranger if the Madridistas did not expect a remarkable comeback, or remontada. There have been so many freakish events at the Bernabéu that they have almost become normalised. In May last year, for example, Madrid scored twice in the final two minutes of the match (through former Stoke City flop Joselu) to defeat Bayern Munich in the Champions League semi-final. Two years earlier, they scored twice in two stoppage-time minutes to defeat Manchester City at the same stage.
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Real Madrid have found a way out of seemingly impossible situations before, especially in Europe - Getty Images/Thomas Coex
Also in 2022, Madrid were trailing by two goals with 30 minutes remaining of their second leg against Paris St-Germain. Karim Benzema promptly scored three goals, the third of which was converted only 11 seconds after his second.
And when Chelsea visited Madrid under the management of Thomas Tuchel, the Premier League side was 10 minutes from victory when Luka Modric produced the most extraordinary assist – a once-in-a-lifetime pass, even for him – to rescue Madrid. With this club, in this arena, no cause is a lost cause. “Anything can happen at the Bernabéu,” as Ancelotti said earlier this month.
Thomas Müller, the Bayern forward, put it succinctly after his team’s brutal defeat last season. “These things happen a lot here,” he said. “Playing against Madrid is very strange.”
In Spain, there are many Madridistas who attribute these comebacks to the “spirit of Juanito”, a former player who passed away in 1992, at the age of just 37. A ferociously passionate forward, he was often a central figure as Madrid produced a series of stirring comebacks in European games in the 1970s and 1980s. Juanito is also known for famously warning an opponent: “Ninety minutes at the Bernabéu is a very long time.”
The story goes that he even produced a list of 10 instructions for his team-mates, detailing how to produce a remontada. These include talking about the comeback from the moment they stepped on to the team bus after the first leg, intimidating the opponent in the tunnel before the match, committing the first foul of the match and engaging the home crowd from the first moment.
We will soon learn whether Ancelotti’s side can follow these guidelines on the pitch, but the pre-match elements appear to have been executed to perfection. Bellingham said on Tuesday that remontada has been the most repeated word in the dressing room over the past week. “There is an expectation of Real Madrid that when we get in these holes, we can come back,” he added.
The good news for Arsenal is that, for all their frightful history, Madrid have never overturned a 3-0 first-leg deficit in the Champions League. The size of the task for the Spaniards is truly enormous. Arsenal have the best defence in the Premier League and have not lost a match by a four-goal margin since November 2021. Logic and reason are on their side, but there lies the danger: logic and reason rarely apply at the Bernabéu.
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