Bayern Munich Did Not Believe In Magic

By any objective reckoning, Bayern Munich should've been considered enormous favorites to beat Real Madrid in their Champions League quarterfinal matchup. Bayern has been one of the two best teams in Europe all season long, while Real has been consistently bad. Bayern's star-studded attack has been firing on all cylinders, cranking out flatly outrageous stats in both domestic and continental play, while Real still hasn't figured out how to build an engine out of its assortment of top-of-the-line parts that unfortunately seem to each belong to completely different car makes. In the first leg of this tie, Bayern took home a hard-fought and well-earned 2-1 win, and had the benefit of playing the second leg at home, inside the cauldron that is the Allianz Arena. Coming into Wednesday's decisive game, there was really no logical reason to think we'd see any other result than Bayern going through.

And yet, if there is one team and one competition where objectivity and logic hold no sway, it's Real Madrid in the Champions League. History, especially of the recent sort, is littered with examples of Real having no rational basis for winning a tie that they inevitably win. Call it black magic, the Twilight Zone , the Spirit of Juanito, or whatever you want—there is real evidence to support the longstanding, widespread belief that some kind of mysterious force allows this particular club to pull off preposterous upsets and comebacks in this particular tournament. Real or not, the belief in this power can itself become a self-fulfilling prophecy, emboldening Blancos to keep pushing despite long odds, and heaping anxiety on opponents who might see in a single unlucky bounce an omen of impending, predestined doom. Indeed, Wednesday's match in Munich opened with one such unlucky bounce that seemed to indicate that the old black magic was once again in the air. But, fortunately for fans of the German club, the Bayern players are not so superstitious.

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