Real Madrid Are Rolling: The Task Now Is to Prolong It Beyond This Season

This time last week Real Madrid were facing a crucial match in the UEFA Champions League. The task in front of them was big and the potential consequences in waiting were even bigger. The coming 24 hours would shape careers and futures, but just looking at Zinedine Zidane, you wouldn’t have known it. 

“The message is to be patient,” said the Real Madrid boss, his expression barely wavering, his voice calm. “Everything happens in football.”

Specifically, Zidane was referring to his side’s second-leg encounter with Wolfsburg in the quarter-finals of the Champions League, where Madrid required the fabled “remontada,” the comeback, in the face of a two-goal deficit that threatened to definitively derail the club’s season.

Zidane’s message could be viewed in a broader context as well; what he was getting at were possibilities. How small moments can alter weeks or even months. 

He wasn’t the first to say it, either. 

“You never know,” said Gareth Bale, “football does funny things to teams when you lose and you never know what could happen.” Bale was speaking in the aftermath of Madrid’s 2-1 defeat of Barcelona in the recent Clasico, his assertion that everything can shift even if the indicators suggest it won’t. “All they [Barcelona] need is a few bad results, we need a few good ones and we’re right back in it.”

It turns out he was correct. 

Real Madrid are right back in it. 

This has been a remarkable reversal in the capital. Little more than a month ago, Madrid looked dead and buried. In late February, they drew with Malaga and then suffered more pain in the derby against Atletico, before going on to trudge through meetings with Levante and Las Palmas. As a group, they looked directionless and dispirited. The outlook appeared bleak and Zidane was already glancing ahead to next season. 

But look at it now. 

Now, Madrid sit just one point back of Barcelona in the league with five games to play, a 12-point swing unfolding between Gerard Pique’s opener in the Clasico and Barcelona’s loss to Valencia just 15 days later. The momentum is Madrid’s, as is an opportunity in Europe. Zidane’s men have surged as Barcelona …

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