Real Madrid were set to extend their unbeaten run to 41 matches until a late own goal, against his old club, by Sergio Ramos sparked Sevilla’s comeback
Zinedine Zidane smiled that smile, the one that has served him so well. What had his team lacked, he was asked; what was it they had needed? “Five minutes,” he said gently. Not long, but long enough to change everything. No one had beaten Real Madrid in 40 matches, going back nine months, 30 teams and five competitions, but Sevilla beat them in five minutes. “We knew that this would happen one day,” Zidane said. He just didn’t expect it to happen like this; by 10.30pm on Sunday, he didn’t expect it to happen at all. No one did. But then, suddenly, there was bedlam and, before they knew it, Sevilla’s players were standing before their fans, celebrating a huge victory that Madrid had thought was theirs.
There’s a line in Sevilla’s anthem, belted out before games and plastered on billboards round their Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán stadium, that says in huge white letters on a red background: “it’s said they never give up”, and afterwards their manager, Jorge Sampaoli, insisted that the key to their 2-1 win against Madrid was that they “never lowered our arms”. This season that’s true, too: if this season’s league games had ended in the 85th minute, they would be 13 points and six places worse off. And yet on 85 minutes, you wondered if they finally had, if this time they really were beaten. If Madrid, unbeaten since April, somehow unbeaten just four days before in this very arena, really were invincible.
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