eal Madrid's Resilience Shines in Champions League Clash

It was up to him to fix it. We don't know what he said, but you assume not very much. Maybe it was a bit like that scene in Pulp Fiction, where the guy unloads his gun at Samuel L. Jackson; Real Madrid had escaped unscathed. Fate had given them a second chance; they had to make it count, and when you've won as much as this group has, you don't need to be reminded of this.

In the first half, we came out alive [but] they were quite a lot better, Dani Carvajal would say after the game. We knew our moment would come. We knew how to suffer.

We do know what Ancelotti did tactically: very little. There was no panic, and no ripping up the blueprint. Just the tweak of shifting Jude Bellingham into a more central position, rather than have him shuffle wide out of possession. It was as if he was telling his crew: You guys can do better and the gods of football have given you the chance to prove it.

That chance was largely down to Thibaut Courtois, the man with the Victor Wembanyama wingspan and the nerves of an F1 driver. The big Belgian goalkeeper made himself even bigger -- like those blowfish who double or triple in size -- to force Karim Adeyemi wide of goal when he was through one-on-one. And because, for all his blistering speed, Adeyemi sometimes has the delicate touch of an Amazon delivery guy, he ended up taking the ball far enough wide that Dani Carvajal was able to trundle across, cover the goal line and snuff out the danger.

Courtois stood tall again when Niclas Füllkrug's angled finish snaked across his body and ended up on the post. And it was him again who collapsed quickly to snuff out another Adeyemi effort just before the half-hour mark.

Each chance had a theme: transition. When Madrid lost possession, the opposition took off upfield in numbers, exploiting Adeyemi's wheels and Marcel Sabitzer's timing in the inside-right channel. It didn't take a genius to figure out that Real Madrid would have the bulk of possession and spend more time in the opposition half. That part of the script was being followed. What was unexpected, however, was the Spanish champions' difficulty in converting all that territory and possession into goals or even concrete chances. (At half-time, Dortmund led the xG battle 1.68 to 0.09.)

Credit a very well-marshalled Dortmund defence -- not something you expect to hear -- and a phenomenal work rate, with Adeyemi and Jadon Sancho doubling up in the wide areas, but also their ability to turn defense into attack in the blink of an eye. It left Madrid frustrated -- as evidenced by Vinicius' late lunge on goalkeeper Gregor Kobel that earned him a yellow card in the first half -- and unable to muster much more than a couple of longer-range strikes.

But then came Madrid's mulligan, and this time, there wouldn't be any bogeys. Other than a Füllkrug header, there were few signs of Dortmund's attacking threat after the break, and Madrid gradually grew into the game, like a boxer who knows his opponent is spent and starts feeling confident.

Bellingham and Kobel both fanned on Eduardo Camavinga's chipped ball into the box. The Englishman, who was not having a great game, took a moment and grabbed the post with both hands, bowing his head. For an instant, you wondered if he was going to rip it out of the ground out of frustration. Instead, he turned, shook his head and jogged back. If you looked closely, you might even have seen a wry smile, as if he knew "we got this."