Real Madrid were outplayed by Ajax in the first leg of their Champions League round of 16 tie, but won anyway.
No team has dominated Europe as thoroughly as the Real Madrid of the recent past since the Real Madrid of the distant past. Appropriately enough, then, for the sport’s oldest, proudest aristocrats, the defining characteristic of this recent dominance has been the team’s overwhelming belief in their own superiority.
Perhaps this was inevitable; who wouldn’t be cocky after three Champions Leagues in a row? But what was notable about the arrogance of Zinedine Zidane’s Madrid was that it persisted in the face of so much evidence to the contrary.
This seeming contradiction, indeed, was what lent the arrogance its weight. We will play worse than you, we will give you the ball, we will leave vast, gaping holes in our defense and then we will win anyway. What a marvelous collection of d**kheads.
What, then, to make of this year’s team? They are different in significant ways to Zidane’s. The maestro is gone, replaced by another former, much worse Madrid player, Santiago Solari, who is doing an at-best-mediocre job. Cristiano Ronaldo is also gone, replaced by no one, really, although 17-year-old Brazilian wonderkid Vinicius Jr. is doing his best to fill the void (unlike the player who was supposed to fill the void, Gareth Bale).
When they face Ajax at the Bernabeu on Tuesday, they will also likely be without the two great exemplars of Los Blancos arrogance remaining in the squad. First is Sergio Ramos, who is banned after deliberately picking up a yellow card in the first leg so that he would be suspended for the second, and therefore enter the quarterfinals with a clean disciplinary slate, which plan only backfired when, in a truly glorious stroke of vanity, he told the media about his plan, thus requiring UEFA to increase it by a game. Even in his absence, his cockiness reigns supreme.
Then, of course, there is Marcelo, that wonderful, tropical bird of a left-back, all lax defending and impossible first touches and complete and total joy in his own genius. Marcelo has been relegated to the bench for 22-year-old Sergio Reguilon, who does things like work back in defense and diligently overlap when Vinicius cuts inside and who is completely and totally uninteresting.
But even with these changes, Real won the first leg against Ajax the same way they’ve been winning Champions League games for years: Despite appearing to be the worse team. They were outshot, outworked, outplayed in Amsterdam, and won 2-1. Because they’re Real Madrid, and until further notice, that is what they do.