Real: ‘We have to leave our souls’

Real Madrid may have been waiting for this moment for 12 years, but it didn’t take them quite that long to get impatient about it. That happened in a matter of minutes.

At the Glasgow Hilton banquet immediately after their last victory in 2002, when they beat Bayer Leverkusen 2-1 to win the club’s ninth Champions League, Florentino Perez began a speech.

“We have won the novena and next year we will go for the decima, and then the undecima and the duodecima.”

In the book ‘Another Way of Winning’, Diego Torres details that many of the Real players were struck by the casual way in which the club president spoke about what should have been such a celebrated achievement.

Clarence Seedorf has elsewhere said that, ahead of the 1998 final against Juventus, “it was virtually a duty to win the competition. That was the purpose the club was built for.”

This is the reality for all those at the club. The reality for Perez, however, has turned out rather different.

The president is still waiting for that 10th trophy, La Decima, let alone the 11th and 12th he immediately spoke of. It is just one aspect only increasing the pressure on the squad.

In the build-up to the Lisbon final, the first stories were already circulating about how failure could mean manager Carlo Ancelotti is sacked.

The Italian, typically, fronted up to all of this in his pre-match press conference.

“We began the season thinking of this objective, to reach this final, to win La Decima,” Ancelotti said. “For all Madridistas, it is a special day. Everybody knows how important this competition is for Real Madrid. My job is to do the best.

It could genuinely mean all or nothing for Ancelotti. Should Real win, he will not just be the man to finally deliver that landmark decima. He will also be the manager to at last match Bob Paisley’s record of three European Cups at Liverpool, to add to his two as a player with AC Milan.

“I receive a lot from this competition because I won four. I had this opportunity, the seventh final I was involved in. I don’t have to ask more in this competition, but we have the luck to be here and we want to do our best. ”

Iker Casillas, who was just 20 years old as he came off the bench to perform heroics in that 2002 final, is well aware of what is needed.

“When you are winning lots of trophies maybe you do not value what you are winning. Now we see what it costs. Twelve years later we are back here, we have missed it.”

That again has only raised the stakes.

“In this match,” Sergio Ramos grandiosely said, ” we have to leave our souls.”

The soul of the club is undeniably wrapped up in this fixture.