A Place In The Pantheon

The current crop of Madrid players and their coach may not be loved much, but they have come to define the last few seasons of the Champions League.

- Samindra Kunti

Zinedine Zidane’s Real Madrid belongs among football’s great teams after winning a 13th European Cup, but the 3­1 victory against Liverpool may signal the end of an era for the club.

In the annals of football history, it will not matter — the details, the minutiae, even the rippling of the net. Even in the minds of the players and the coaches — the protagonists — it won’t matter. The resplendence of Gareth Bale’s bicycle kick, Loris Karius’ calamitous blunders and Mohamed Salah’s heartbreaking injury — of an epic Champions League final will eventually be of little importance.

In the end, Madrid played with the cockiness its players have shown over the last couple of seasons. In their superiority, they always apply a pleasant brutality and aggression to their game. They were not as dominant in this final as against Juventus last year, but this win was more significant. In Cardiff last year, Madrid shed the tag of ‘Galacticos’ and needed an epithet befitting a new merengue generation whose trademark was not playing thrilling football or honouring the game’s finest virtues but winning.

On the day, Zidane and this Madrid team ascended to the pantheon, like the Ajax Amsterdam of Johan Cruyff and Franz Beckenbauer’s Bayern Munich before them. They are no longer simply great; they already belong to history.