Predrag Mijatovic was hit by a revelation in the middle of the night before the 1998 European Cup final. Unable to sleep, he walked into the bathroom at the team’s hotel in the woods outside Amsterdam, looked in the mirror and, standing there, ‘saw’ it: Madrid were going to defeat Juventus and he was going to get the goal. He splashed water on his face, climbed back into bed and said to Davor Suker: “Davor, we’re going to win 1-0 tomorrow.” And that was exactly what happened.
Mijatovic looks on that game as something mystical. He should not even have played: he had hidden an injury from his manager, refusing to practise a penalty at the end of the final training session, telling Jupp Heynckes they would not need a shootout. “Better to look arrogant than injured,” he recalls, but he feared tearing his calf. Until that late-night moment he feared defeat, too – they all did.
Madrid had been abysmal in the league, finishing fourth, 11 points off Barcelona. Heynckes was on his way, unlamented. En route to the Amsterdam Arena, there was silence on the bus. “It was like a funeral parlour,” one player recalls. Madrid had not been in a European Cup final since 1981, when they lost against Liverpool, and had not won the competition for 32 years. Juventus had been European champions two years earlier, had knocked out Madrid in 1996, and were preparing for their third final in a row.
At kick-off the midfielder Angelo Di Livio had “1.0” written on his hand. Mijatovic assumed it was a scoreline but later discovered it was the bonus Juventus players were on: one million lira. They never got it. Real Madrid beat Juventus to win their seventh European Cup. Last season they met in another European Cup final, in Cardiff, and Madrid won 4-1. It was the fifth time they had won the tournament since that final in Amsterdam; Juventus have not won it once in that time. On Tuesday night, in Turin, they meet again.
“It can’t be as bad as Cardiff,” Gigi Buffon told AS. “You have to lose a lot to win,” Giorgio Chiellini told Marca. Juventus have lost a lot but they have won a lot, too. They might not have won the European Cup since 1998 but they have been close – very close – three times. Only Madrid, Bayern Munich and Milan have been in more European Cup finals than Juventus, yet the Old Lady have won only as many titles as Nottingham Forest. Madrid have won 12 of 15 finals; Juventus two of nine.
Juventus bring back good, symbolic memories for Madrid. In 1998 Madrid ended that long wait for the competition that defines them; in 2017 they beat them in the final to win a league and European Cup double for the first time in 59 years. And yet there was no desire to meet them again. “I don’t want to face them, for many reasons,” Zinedine Zidane said.
He had been in that defeated Juventus team in 1998 and he admitted that the “emotion” plays a part. This will be the first time he has returned to Turin as a coach. “I’ll try to concentrate like the players do and leave behind everything that I lived there,” he said.
There is more to it than that, though. Bayern, Barcelona and Manchester City are probably stronger than Juventus but there is something about Juventus that inspires respect in Spain. These sides have faced each other 19 times, this will be the third meeting in four years, and a poll in one paper suggested that Juve were the team Madrid fans most wanted to avoid. One paper called them the “black and white ogre”. And yet this is Madrid, the champions, and Max Allegri, too, said he did not want to face the team who defeated him in last year’s final. “Madrid are better and that’s not me saying that, it’s history,” Buffon said.
Zidane insisted: “I think they’re stronger than last year, and as competitive as ever.”
Madrid’s side may well be the same as in Cardiff, although Marco Asensio and Lucas Vázquez will challenge Isco for his place, with Gareth Bale likely to sit out again despite two goals on Saturday. Juventus’s squad has changed more; Federico Bernardeschi is likely to miss out, and Medhi Benatia and Miralem Pjanic are suspended. And yet, somehow, for the Spanish it is less about the players, more about the word Zidane used, one they tend to see as defining Italian football and Juve in particular: competitive.
“Tottenham were the better side for much of the tie but Juventus have that [something],” Emilio Butragueño said. Chiellini said: “We will never play like Madrid, [but] there is a pleasure in stopping your opponent.” Despite that difference, some in Spain see parallels with Madrid, a team revived by Europe, a team who somehow find a way.
When Madrid got Juventus in the 2015 semi-final, one member of Madrid’s coaching staff privately said it had been a good draw. And, considering that Barcelona and Bayern met in the other semi-final, it probably was. But Juventus knocked out Madrid – the last team to do so in this competition. These two teams have met three times in knockout rounds since that final in Amsterdam and Juventus have progressed each time, just as they progressed in 1996.
“It has no explanation,” Buffon said, but adds an extra element to a tie that already has something special about it, a repetition of last year’s final over two games. That says something, as does the fact that Juventus were finalists in 2015. They might not have been able to take the title but they’re good at getting to the last hurdle. And Madrid, in particular, know that.
