MADRID — For 95 minutes, this was the Champions League as it imagines itself to be. Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, European soccer’s two ultimate aristocrats, relentlessly trading blows, a game of boundless adrenaline, deafening noise and unbearable tension, glittering with stardust.
For the other minute, the one that decided it, the one that ensured Real Madrid will contest a third consecutive final and stands, now, on the cusp of winning the competition for the third time in a row, it was a scratch game in a park, a slapstick routine, a high, public farce.
