RODRYGO THE ANSWER TO MADRID’S PRAYERS
WHEN the final whistle blew, Rodrygo kneeled to apparently say a prayer or ask for thanks before joining the celebrations and throwing on a T-shirt reading ‘Let’s go for the 14th.’ The young Brazilian was trying to absorb how he had etched his name into Real Madrid’s long love story with the European Cup. After all, ‘We were dead’ he said. Rodrygo’s goals in the 90th minute and in stoppage time had inspired another win for the ages. The 3-1 victory over Manchester City gave Madrid yet another comeback and set them up for a showdown with Liverpool in the Champions League final on May 28 in Paris. ‘I don’t have words for what happened today. God looked at me and said, “Today is your day”,’ Rodrygo said about his two goals that sent Wednesday’s match into extra time at the Santiago Bernabeu. City were moments away from returning to the final before the substitute stunned the English champions. Madrid, who had trailed City ever since second minute of their first-leg match in Manchester, were finally level. Pep Guardiola’s team still had another half hour of extra time, but they never recovered. It seemed inevitable that once resuscitated there was no stopping Madrid. And fittingly it fell to Karim Benzema, the man who had carried Madrid to the final four with hat-tricks in the previous two rounds, to earn and convert the decisive penalty that clinched a 6-5 aggregate victory. ‘I couldn’t hear what my teammates were saying to me because I couldn’t believe what was happening,’ Rodrygo said about the mayhem that erupted after his goals. ‘We were dead, and then what happened was what happened.’ All good teams occasionally score against the flow of the game. But most, and especially this City under Guardiola, need to dominate stretches of play to produce lots of goals.
Not Madrid. Not in front of their fans. The clock becomes meaningless for Madrid at home. The 13-time European Cup winners produce those magic moments when time is suddenly compressed, the crowd roars, opponents freeze, and the goals just flow in quick succession. Ask PSG how Benzema was able to score three goals in less than 20 minutes of the second leg of their round-of-16 series that Kylian Mbappe’s team had once controlled to advance 3-2 overall. Ask Chelsea how it was they could have the momentum going into the final period of their quarter-final in Spain’s capital only for Rodrygo and Benzema to score late for a 5-4 aggregate win in extra time. Once again, faith had trumped reason at the Santiago Bernabeu. Spanish sports daily Marca summed it up with its front-page headline: ‘Let God come down and explain it.’