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“This is why you guys come to these games,” Vincent Kompany had said, and here especially. For the quality, the chaos, and the goals, the noise, the drama and the history that invades every moment, even when it seems to be finally left behind. Another wild night at the Santiago Bernabéu seemed to have set up for another barely believable finish, another of those crazy comebacks, but in the end Bayern Munich held on, setting up what is sure to be a special second leg instead.

Goals from Luis Díaz and Harry Kane had given Bayern a 2-0 lead here and at that stage there was an authority about them that had seemed incontestable, but Madrid it seemed always have a response and a Kylian Mbappé goal brought about a revival, a rebellion that threatened to secure a draw. But there was Bayern’s 40-year-old goalkeeper Manuel Neuer to keep them at bay, just.

Bayern had gone at Madrid from the very start, even if that meant risking being exposed. Asked about the threat from Vinícius and Mbappé, Kompany had invited his enquirer to contemplate the threat posed by his players instead. Madrid had no choice but to do so. The first shot came after 43 seconds and Konrad Laimer could have scored from it.

Michael Olise could have scored from the second after four minutes, his free-kick clipping off the wall and just over. And from the third, Andriy Lunin just managed to tip a corner over from just beneath the bar. It had been deliberate too from Joshua Kimmich.

Harry Kane, alone at the far post, then passed up the opportunity to go for goal and instead cushioned a volley into Dayot Upamecano. Although it dropped a fraction behind him, the defender still could not believe that he had not scored from three yards, Álvaro Carreras somehow scrambling clear.

At this point, Madrid could not get out from very, very deep, Bayern boxing them in, smothering them, but they would. And when they did that, danger came. Manuel Neuer was soon in action, first making a sharp block from Mbappé after Arda Guler had slipped him in and then a minute later diving low to deny Vinícius from the edge of the area.

Bayern pushed them back still – there was a two minute passage of play where they worked the ball into the Madrid area, out the Madrid area and then back in again, the men in white shirts unable to stop them. But Madrid had awoken, seen an escape route into which to occasionally run, and this was becoming some game.

With Madrid under pressure and giving the ball away, twice in a minute Serge Gnabry might have given Bayern the lead. The first, handed to them by Trent Alexander-Arnold, saw the forward just fail to control inside the six-yard box; the second, which began at the feet of Thiago Pitarch, needed Lunin to come and stop him. Mbappé then drew another superb save from Neuer, a strong right hand keeping this at 0-0.

Pressed once more, Vinícius’s loose and seemingly frustrated ball backwards – as much a way of releasing it and himself from the pressure as a pass – hit Olise and suddenly Madrid were turned; five seconds later the ball was in the net. Gnabry, Kane, Gnabry, and there was Díaz dashing in unseen over Alexander-Arnold’s shoulder to score.

The first had taken a while to come, the second would not. They had only been back out for twenty-one seconds when Madrid lost the ball again with equally fatal consequences. Carreras this time was dispossessed, Aleksandar Pavlovic and Olise combined to find Kane, all calm amid the chaos, to sidefoot home from twenty yards.

Still they pressed. Bayern were not going to sit on this and when Laimer and Kane shut down Federico Valverde, the Uruguayan had to dive in to stop a third. Madrid were at Bayern’s mercy, their only hope now apparently to hang on, not let it get worse, and try again in eight days time.

And yet – and how many times have you heard ‘and yet’ when it comes to Madrid in Europe? – they really should have scored just after the hour when a long punt from Alexander Arnold and a slip from Upamecano, the most basic of “build ups”, saw Vinícius suddenly clean through. Neuer though held his nerve, forced him wide, and the Brazilian’s shot hit the side netting.

When Mbappé got free soon after, Jude Bellingham bursting through to find him, Neuer made a fantastic stop low to his right. Embolden by that, and perhaps the belief that there was nothing to lose now, almost immediately Mbappé was in again, Vinícius finding him to bend just wide.

Bayern were tiring, Madrid revived. And then it happened, this place erupting the way this place does, that familiar feeling flooding back, a glimpse of another miracle. A brilliant ball from Alexander-Arnold right across the Bayern six-yard box found Mbappé arriving at the far post to put the ball off the bar and over the line. The gap between these teams had felt big at times, but it was just one goal now, the momentum was Madrid’s and there was still more that a quarter of an hour left. And that is an eternity here.

Vinícius Junior went through, stopped by Neuer, arguably the decisive figure of the night, and the Bayern keeper then saved from Éder Militão. The minutes slipped away, Mbappé dashing through and curling just wide on 89 minutes, but this time, that moment didn’t come, and so to Munich.