Charles Jackson
The Champions League final is defined, Real Madrid will face the surprise Borussia Dortmund on June 1st, at Wembley. What can we expect from this clash between the champions of Spain and a team that most expected not to leave the group? Here are three main questions before the final.
How to watch
Date: Saturday, June 1st | Time: 3:00 p.m. ET
Location: Wembley Stadium – London, England
TELEVISION: CBS | Flow: Paramount+
Will Real Madrid need his flair for the dramatic?
Here we are again, a Real Madrid team that hasn’t emerged as one of Europe’s best over the last 10 months and is still where it needs to be on the decisive night of the continental season. That’s exactly what they do, even if they rarely do it the easy way. Another team may have given in to late pressure from RB Leipzig. Many would never have been able to stand their ground as Manchester City swung hay after hay in their direction for two hours at the Etihad. No one other than Real Madrid would have believed it was their manifest destiny to arrive at Wembley a goal down against Bayern Munich, Europe’s masters of defensive possession, with eight minutes and added time on the clock.
This is how Madrid does things. Except they certainly won’t need that at Wembley, will they? Make no mistake, Carlo Ancelotti’s men are prohibitive favorites, -350 on the first bets against a team that may not even reach the top four of the Bundesliga this season (it’s their excellence in the Champions League and that of their contemporaries in European competitions which means Dortmund will be back in the big time no matter what happens in 2024-25). BVB may have held their own against the likes of Antoine Griezmann and Kylian Mbappe, but in the final they will face an opponent who doesn’t tend to be so heliocentric.
Real Madrid can simply give the ball to Vinicius Junior and watch him cook – it worked well enough to leave Joshua Kimmich in ruins at the Santiago Bernabéu – but they can crush teams with their possession, exploit the predatory instincts of Rodrygo and Jude Bellingham or launch a bank that always seems to offer different looks for Ancelotti. Pound for pound (and Real Madrid spent a lot more), the Spanish champions are much better than their opponents. In fact, would anyone in the Dortmund team replace their Madrid counterpart? Maybe Ian Maatsen and Gregor Kobel if Thibaut Courtois isn’t back to full fitness by June 1st.
The 14-time champions should win handily and that fact alone offers a curious pause for reflection. Real Madrid’s greatness in this post-Cristiano Ronaldo competition has been defined by its flair for the dramatic, continually finding itself in situations where it is on the brink of teams that perhaps it should lose to anyway. Can they deal with circumstances in which everyone, probably even the Dortmund players in their most sincere moments, expects them to win? Or will they simply have to manufacture another disadvantageous scenario for themselves?
Will Dortmund be able to relieve the defensive pressure?
Borussia Dortmund would not have got this far if it were not for the age-defying excellence of Mats Hummels, man of the match in both legs of the semi-final and the group stage victory in Milan, and the defense he put together. Nico Schlotterbeck looks like a man who has absorbed every lesson his veteran partner has to offer. Kobel was the best goalkeeper in the Champions League this season.
Where the three defenders led, the rest followed. Not just the full-backs but also those in front of them, the triumph over Paris Saint-Germain is all the more possible thanks to the diligence of Jadon Sancho and Karim Adeyemi, neither of whom were known as hard-working wingers before arriving at the Westfalenstadion.
Dortmund deserve praise for what they’ve done defensively, but man, they’ve done a lot, even though they’re still giving up an average of 1.7 expected goals (xG) per game. In recent years, most winners have reached the final thanks to some of the best, if not the best, defense in the competition. Think Chelsea in 2021 or Manchester City two years later. What none of these teams had to do was face the cold snap that PSG displayed in front of goal in the semi-finals. It’s been five years of Champions League football since a team made as many xG as Kylian Mbappe and co recorded at 3.25 without scoring.
There is a limit to how long you can live this dangerously. Dortmund proved this in the Bundesliga. The fact that they are fifth in the table is largely due to the fact that they have given up 50.9 xG in 32 games, a bottom-half return that is around two-thirds more than either Bayern Munich or the Bayer Leverkusen allow. Hummels, Schlotterbeck and Kobel were also excellent in the Bundesliga, but expand the sample size enough and individual excellence can only get you so far. For all the industry that Emre Can and Marcel Sabitzer have shown on European nights, there isn’t enough midfield to stop the best of the best from getting into shooting positions. Edin Terzic will have to find an alternative solution.
Who closes Kroos?
With a month to go, it may be premature to delve into the minutiae of this occasion. Terzic has two more games to improve his selection or lose players to injury, Ancelotti four. For the first in particular, the wealth is so great that it is difficult to know how he will set up his midfield. Federico Valverde, Eduardo Camavinga, Aurelien Tchouameni and Luka Modric are all fighting for perhaps just two places in the XI. That’s because if anyone appears to be an obstacle to selection, it’s Toni Kroos, somehow reaching the peak of his career at 34. Although I suppose when his greatest qualities were always between your ears, it didn’t matter that his legs robbed you of any real driving force.
Either way, Kroos didn’t really need to step up in the second leg masterclass against Bayern Munich. Dropping deep enough to sit on the left side of a three-man defense in preparation, the German had all the time he wanted to take a touch, check where the space was and, quite frequently, drop a dime just in the right spot for Vinicius to pass straight at Joshua Kimmich. On most occasions, it is not necessary to raise five alarms when the midfielder moves so close to his defenders. It should have been more difficult for Kroos, at least the distances between him and his teammates were greater. But when you have the German’s precision you can create all kinds of problems for the opposition.
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His positioning to the left of the baseline seemed particularly deliberate. The obvious solution would be to have Dortmund’s right winger Sancho deal with it, but that would make it easier for Vinicius to isolate Julian Ryerson. The combined efforts of Julian Brandt and Niclas Fullkrug may also not be enough, as Real Madrid will have a man advantage in their back three. Someone will have to go to Kroos. Given space and time, he can apply a chokehold to any defense, the kind Dortmund cannot reasonably expect to survive during the hour or so the veteran has on his legs.
Quieten Kroos and at least they will have stopped Real Madrid’s most vital weapon in their preparation. Do the same with Vinicius, Valverde, Bellingham, Rodrygo and a few others and Dortmund could have something going.
