Champions League Final: Ancelotti Fears For Real Madrid, Says Game Against Dortmund ‘Most Dangerous’
- Thibaut Courtois starts for favourites in Wembley final
- As Dortmund plot final shocker for Los Blancos
Expressing his feeling about today’s Champions League Final thus; “You fear it can escape you. It’s a feeling we all have”, Coach Carlo Ancelotti has described the Champions League final as the “most dangerous” game of the season for Real Madrid.
The coach spoke on the eve of Madrid facing German side, Borussia Dortmund as overwhelming favourites to win their sixth European Cup in a decade and the 15th in their history.
For him, battling Dortmund, considered the Wembley underdogs by pundits, Madrid will confront a team that has adapted to thrive as collective, having shed their youth-oriented, and profit-hungry model to reach new heights with a tougher assemblage.
Ancelotti, while denying the competition was an “obsession” for the newly crown La Liga Champions, however admitted there would be fear in the hours before kick-off, insisting their campaign should be defined as “successful whatever happens” at Wembley.
According to him“The obsession is to try to do your best, as we have all season; sometimes it doesn’t go the way you want”.
The Italian manager, who is making his eighth appearance in a European Cup final, six as a coach and two as a player, confirmed Thibaut Courtois would start in goal. Despite not having played a minute in the competition after a torn cruciate ligament in August, the Belgian was likely to be chosen ahead of Andriy Lunin.
Interestingly, any doubt was removed when the Ukrainian caught flu and had to be isolated from the team. Lunin is expected to land in London this Saturday morning. “He will be on the bench”, Ancelotti said.
Noteworthy is the fact that Madrid have not lost the past eight European Cup finals they have played, going back to their meeting with Liverpool in 1981. In none of those have they been considered such clear favourites.
Having defeated Manchester City and Bayern Munich en route, they face surprise finalists who had been widely regarded in Spain as the weakest of the eight quarter-finalists. Although Ancelotti and his players have talked about the “confidence” and “calmness” that surrounds the team, they have been keen to stress they are taking nothing for granted, admitting there will be nerves.
Ancelotti joked that he had told the striker Joselu, who scored two dramatic late goals to win the semi-final: “It’s your fault we’re not on holiday.”
He also said, more seriously; “The final is the most important game but also the most dangerous. You have to enjoy being here, but then comes the worry that something will go wrong.
“You feel close, very, very close, to the most important thing in football. You fear it can escape you. It’s a feeling we all have. It is very hard to get here, and you feel success close so then there’s fear.
“That will start tonight, tomorrow morning, tomorrow afternoon. Lots of worry, lots of fear. That’s normal. When you go through that fear, if you win you’re even more happy.”
Luka Modric, the Madrid captain Nacho Fernández, Dani Carvajal and Toni Kroos are one game from joining Paco Gento on a record six European Cup wins. Yet they followed Ancelotti’s lead in insisting that they do not think it is done, still less that they are invincible – even if it sometimes looks that way in this competition.
Modric said; “Years ago, it would have been unthinkable that we could reach [Gento], but we’re here. We’re very happy, enjoying this. Hopefully we can take that extra step as a team. Having six European Cups would be something incredible.”
But in plotting the Champions League final shocker for their Spanish opponents all week, and by small degrees, the fans and supporters of the German side turned London into yellow and black with stickers on Tube escalators. Scarves tied to lampposts and a BVB-emblazoned padlock on the banks of the Thames at Westminster.
Wide-eyed fans have been milling through the pubs of Soho, wincing at the beer prices and trying to soak up every last available morsel of enjoyment from the experience before the actual football starts this evening.
It is a largely moot point whether Dortmund are the biggest final outsiders in the modern history of the Champions League. Perhaps Internazionale last season, perhaps Liverpool in 2005. Either way, given the opposition, their fifth-placed finish in the Bundesliga and the charmed passage they have enjoyed to the final, few people are giving them any hope of making it big at Wembley on tonight.
“I believe we have a chance”, Dortmund Chief executive, Hans-Joachim Watzke, said at Dortmund airport on Friday morning, which as rousing battle cries go, is towards the milder end of the scale.
And if Real Madrid are here for business and business alone, for Dortmund the equation has always been slightly more complex. Since Jürgen Klopp led them to a League and Cup double in 2012, they have finished second in the Bundesliga seven times, lost nine out of 14 Cup finals.
Their last Champions League final, also at Wembley in 2013, had a similar ambience. Even at the time their narrow 2-1 defeat by Bayern Munich felt like a high-water mark, the culmination of the project Klopp had so spectacularly set in motion, and so it proved.
One by one the jewels of that brilliant team were picked off. Mario Götze, Mats Hummels and Robert Lewandowski by Bayern; Ilkay Gündogan by Manchester City; the rest by time and decline.
Klopp himself hung on until 2015, exhausted and beaten. Bayern were in the early stages of a run that would eventually end on 11 straight Bundesliga titles.
So, in the foothills of tonight’s showdown, Dortmund, out of a seemingly hopeless situation, have a golden opportunity. Win this final, and never again will they be known as the perennial bridesmaids, the eternal seconds, the arch-bottlers.
Under the Wembley arch, Dortmund have a chance not just to make history, but to write themselves a new future. – With The Guardian report
