Deep down, Real Madrid does not believe in magic. Or, rather, it does not only believe in magic. It might have spent much of the last three months apparently touched by some golden light, its run to the Champions League final a dream of stirring comebacks and insurmountable odds and impossible triumphs.
Those triumphs, against Paris St.-Germain and Chelsea and Manchester City, might have seemed to prove that ultimate victory in this competition is Real Madrid’s irrevocable destiny, that it is driven by some elemental, unstoppable force, one that defies rational explanation and brooks no resistance.