It's hard to remember now after they've won the competition more often than not, but in the eleven years preceding (2003 - 2013) they didn't win once. It was an obsession of Real Madrid's to win La Decima. For a while they never got close, losing in the Round of 16 five straight seasons, some in embarrassing fashion. But Jose Mourinho changed that, along with Cristiano. But even then it was a series of Semifinal losses - all various levels of infamy, from losing to Barcelona, to losing on PKs, to losing 1-4 in a 1st leg to Dortmund.
But 2014 seemed different. Ancelotti had the team humming in Europe. Their 5-0 two-leg win over Bayern Munich, including a 4-0 undressing of Munich in Munich in the second leg, was the stuff of legend. I was on a project in Mexico at the time. I vividly remember teh second leg playing out on a TV in teh corner of the lunch spot we were at. The first Ramos header was fun, the second was insane, and then the perfect counter attack, ending in Ronaldo's goal to make it 3-0 was ecstasy.
I was similarly abroad for the final, on a cruise with friends. They had one sports bar on the boat that showed the game, though we arrived towards the end of the second half, when Madrid was still trailing. They were dominating the game (something often forgotten). It seemed like a fait accompli they would win, and the mystique and aura of Madrid's recent times would indeed start with Ramos's goal at 92:48, but at the time it seemed like the most agonizing way to lose out on La Decima, to your crosstown rival. So much might be different if Ramos doesn't get that header. Ancelotti maybe gets fired then, losing both the league and UCL to Atletico Madrid. But isntead 92:48 happened, and everything has happened since starts from that moment.
2016
The whole Zidane 1.0 experience seems like a fever dream, maybe none more than the first title at this point. Zidane took over a talented team in dissaray, and almost instantly got them humming. He committed to Casemiro being in teh starting eleven, displacing primarily James. Real Madrid was probably the best team in Europe the second half of that season, going 15-1-2 in La Liga under Zidane, including a 2-1 in Barcelona during a 10-game win streak to close the season. They were amazing. They weren't though in Europe.
Looking back now, if there was any year where Real Madrid didn't really deserve the trophy for their level of play, it was this one, as it was fairly flimsy, but even within that there were some amazing moments. The greatest being the 3-0 2nd leg win against Wolfsburg, a hat trick by Ronaldo, to overturn a 0-2 first leg loss. That first leg was dreadful, but this was the birth of something special. Even in the Round of 16, there was a great moment after Ronaldo scored the opener in the first leg, where he runs right over to Zidane and gives him a giant hug. Vibes FC to some degree started then.
The semifinal was a dour 1-0 two-leg win over a pre-Pep Man City. The final a fairly average performance in a 1-1 (5-3 in penalties) win over Atletico Madrid, but even in these games Zidane showed a keen ability to change up game plans and styles. In the final, after scoring first, Zidane had his team sit back a bit. I remember in that moment being fairly in awe of Zidane's ability to know how to push and pull posession vs. counter. The penalties were never in doubt, Madrid going 5 for 5 with none being close to being stopped. This was the first penalty shootout Madrid played since losing to Bayern in the 2012 semis, a shootout with three misses, including a comically bad miss by Ramos to end it. Here, Ramos got the 4th penalty and Ronaldo finished it. They weren't the best often in Europe, but they were in Spain and they were, more than anything, ust get started.
2017
Everyone has that one season that they just completely obsess over. In other sports, it was the 2002-03 Devils (they won the Cup!) or the 2009 Colts (they... didn't win it all...). For soccer, it was the 2016-17 Real Madrid team - Zidane's first year in charge, fighting off fluke allegations. The team itself fighting off fluke allegations. Instead, they had one of the best years in their history, winning the league with style, winning Europe with style, capped off with a masterclass of a Final, a 4-1 throttling of a very good Juventus team, where they toyed with them for the entirety of the second half.
This was a team on a mission - a mission to win the league for the first time in five years, and to do what no team had done before in the modern incarnation of the Champions League: go back-to-back. It started brilliantly, with extending their streak of games without a loss to 28 in La Liga before finally dropping one in Seville on January 15th. This team was so good, so deep that by the second half of the season, to conserve the stars legs for the Champions League run, Zidane played full B teams for road games. Of course, the B team included Nacho, Pepe, James, Kovacic, Morata, Bale (by then replaced by Isco), Asensio, etc. This was dominance & depth personified.
Their run through Europe was also something special, going 6-0-1 in the knockout rounds, the one loss being a 2nd leg 2-1 loss to Atleti after winning 3-0 in the first leg. It was Ronaldo at his best, with hat tricks against Bayern (2nd leg QF) and Atleti (1st leg SF), but also the team as a whole at their best. That starting XI shoudl go down in history: Navas - Carvajal - Ramos - Varane - Marcelo - Casemiro - Kroos - Modric - Isco - Benzema - Ronaldo. The Gala XI. The best team in Europe by far.
It's become super fashionable to categorically state how Madrid is a UCL monster but was rarely the best team in Europe. I argue vehemently against this most seasons. They definitely weren't the best team in Europe in 2018 (we'll come to that in a minute) and 2022, but they probably were in 2014, 2024. I would argue they were in 2016 if we take the Zidane period of the team. All that noise aside, the one undisputable fact is taht they were the best team in teh world in 2017. A magical team, that capped it off with a truly dominant performance against Juventus in the final. Juve had given up 3 goals the entire competition - they scored 4. They could've scored 6. Juventus had some moments in the first half, including a ludicrously cool team goal, but that second half should be put in a museum for Madrid. They were so clearly the team on the mountaintop.
2018
Overtime, the threepeat got this unearned reputation that they weren't good domestically but jsut overly brilliant in Europe. It is for the mess of the 2018 season that this label stuck. It isn't deserved. The 2017 team won La Liga, and the 2016 team probably would have had Zidane been there from the start, losing out by one point after finishing on that 15-2-1 run I noted. But in 2018, tehy were just not all that good in Spain. I don't know if it was intentional, but man did they rise in Europe.
I specifically remember their quarterfinal win over Juventus. How could you not - the cementing moment being Ronaldo's first leg bicycle-kick in the rain. Madrid by then already were gone in Spain, but of course they go to Turin and win 3-0 in a driving rainstorm scoring wonder-goals. That incredible reaction of Zidane brushing his head, as much a meme moment as the goal itself. Of course, they then almost blow it, giving up that 3-0 lead before a 92nd minute penalty in the 2nd leg. I was at my eye doctors at the time, in the waiting room, just catatonic that their 3-0 first leg win would nearly be for naught. But nothing is for naught.
Same with the Semifinal first leg win in Munich, won by a brilliant goal by Marco Asensio. The 2018 team for all their faults became to date the only winner to win all three of their knockout stage away leg matches, 2-1 in Paris, 3-0 in Turin, 2-1 in Munich. That is who they were. They just knew how to win. I remember those moments more than the final, which they deservedly won 3-1 against Liverpool but the whole affair clouded by the weirdness hanging over things. I don't think we knew Zidane was days away from retiring, but the celebration seemed muted - made worse by Bale and Ronaldo both giving post-match interviews expressing their displeasure.
The Zidane era would end, the Ronaldo era would end. For all the weirdness, the fact they threepeated is still so surreal. No one had won two straight in teh Champions League era, and now this Madrid team, with a fairly similar starting 11 each year, wins three straight. It was crazy, made even more crazy by a novice manager who happened to be one of the greatest players ever as the manager pulling the strings. It ended badly, and needed Zidane to rescue them again months later, but for a moment it all seemed so incredibly surreal.
2022
This is the one that cemented them as the run to end all runs. I still remember that second leg against Man City. I was in the airport, about to board a flight to Las Vegas (to then head to Zion). I was following the game on the airport TVs, boarding when it was 1-0 Man City (5-3 on aggregate) heading towards the end of full time. I turned it off, and boarded. The row in front of me had a guy watching the game and he exclaimed in glee that we were heading to extra time. I'll admit, it was the one time I turned my back on Madrid, and they repaid it with two goals by Rodrygo.
I quickly signed up for a free trial of Paramount+ to watch extra time, with Benzema's penalty, and see them close it out in euphoric glee, the game ending right before take-off. It was thrilling. It was a European night in the Bernabeu. That whole run was about nights in the Bernabeu, from Benzema's second half hat trick to overcome PSG in the Round of 16, to of course Benzema's 96th minute winner to break a 4-4 aggregate tie against Chelsea in the Quarterfinals. People say Madrid escaped, but to me it was Madrid just making the right plays at the right times. We gloss over in this run Madrid winning 3-1 in Stamford Bridge, or three times scoring after Man City took two goal leads in teh first leg in Manchester. They were never overrun, just always around.
The final itself was fairly unremarkable, a 1-0 win over Liverpool where Courtois made great save after great save, and Vinicius scored a great winner. This run wasn't about the final. By the time we got to the final, the Real Madrid black magic seemed too real for anyone to have any expectation other than a Real Madrid victory.
The other aspect of this year was the Benzema of it all. Benzema left a year later, after winning the Balon d'Or, and while Madrid didn't replace him directly, it clearly didn't really impact them too much. For that reason it's easy to forget about how ridiculous Benzema was that season. The two hat tricks in the Champions League. The oodles of league goals in a fairly easy La Liga win for Madrid. The cold blooded penalty in extra time against Man City. This was the best player in the world. He was in Madrd forever, but only reached that height for a couple seaons, but enough to make a lasting, memorable impression for the most magical of runs.
2024
It seems all so set in stone when it ended. Madrid was the clear best team in Spain, probably the best team in Europe when firing on all cylinders. They didn't fire on all cylinders in the final, but it didn't matter because it never does. Madrid just wins. Their goal was inevitable. People will probably overstate the amount to which they were "lucky" - certainly Dortmund was the better team in teh first half but they expended way too much energy to wear that crown. Madrid ruled that second half.
But the story of this team is the ultimate set of vibes. It wasn't that Madrid didn't have harmonious locker rooms before. The 2014 team was legendarily close-knit - this before Bale got hurt and got a bit sidelined, that being the weird undercurrent always present during the threepeat. But this year it was all fun and games. Not that it wasn't hard. La Liga was easy - from the second they beat Girona towards the end of the first half of the season it was basically set in stone. But Europe was not.
For all the vibes and fun of this team though, my lasting memory will be their tie against Man City, particularly their performance in Manchester needing a result after a 3-3 draw in Madrid. They scored first. They defended brilliantly - albeit giving up the equalizer. And then, in their first knockout tie penalty shootout in 12 years, since the disaster against Munich, they were never in doubt. Modric did miss his first, but after they were given some life, Madrid hit the next four with ease. The best one to me was Lucas Vasquez, the main who has worn so many hats but stayed so resolved in his ability to come through in big moments. There was no doubt in the world he was making that penalty. There was no doubt Madrid was winning this title.
La Decima took forever, but adding the next cinco took no time at all. 10 years. Only three players remain, but far more than three won at least four of the six (many constants in teh 2014 + 2016-18 groups) or even five. The fact that though only three remain, two of which are bench players in Modric and Nacho, and one being the second choice back (Carvajal), does make this into a bit of an end of an era. Granted, with Mbappe coming on board, no one would be shocked if they win again next year. But this 6 wins in 11 years run is over, and it was amazing, it was world changing. It was Madrid.
