Vinícius edges Real Madrid past tenacious RB Leipzig and into last eight
Real Madrid are inevitable. Sometimes football can feel futile and rarely more so than when you face the club that rightly consider this competition their own. It doesn’t matter what you do, you’re doomed. However well you play, however brave you are and however many chances you make, somehow, you know. This is just what they do. They faced a shot for each of the 14 European Cups that stand at the Santiago Bernabéu yet still won the first leg, Brahim Díaz getting the only goal with a combination of faith, fortune and fantasy, and there were nerves again in the second but they escaped into the quarter-final.
Just. They had lived on edge, Dani Olmo hitting the bar in the final minute, but they lived another day. Sometimes it feels like they like it this way. Jude Bellingham took them there, striding up the pitch to set up Vinícius Júnior to score the goal that ultimately saw them through. They had suffered, and they had conceded, forced to hold on in those final, frightening minutes, but they had made it. Leipzig could hardly have done more – except score – but there was no comeback.
