We’ve had the luxury of watching two very entertainig match up between Real Madrid and Bayern Munich and Liverpool and Roma — a hard for 4–3 win for Los Blancos and a 6 goal thriller in Rome.

Real Madrid v Bayern

12 time champions Real Madrid knock Bayern out of the Champions League. Bayern getting their asses handed to them by Madrid is becoming a common occurrence in the Champions League. However, this was a very close match, and Bayern unlike previous years did not absolutely crumble. They fought extremely hard, and loanee James Rodriguez was arguably their most outstanding player. He, alongside Ribery, were attacking threats to Real over the course of both ties — providing crucial passes, an assists and a goal.

The Galacticos on the other hand suffered — in the sense that they had to defend wave after wave of Bayern Munich’s attacks. Playing defensively is not in Madrid’s DNA, thankfully they’ve managed to whether the storm through superb defending from Ramos, Varane, Navas and midfield play from Modric.

Some claim the Galacticos were lucky in in scoring the goals. This is false, Toni Kross pretty much sums it up:

“A lot of the players have played in plenty of big games and we can stay calm in difficult situations because we know we can beat everybody. Even when we are not winning, we can change a game. We’ve experienced lots of situations, so we don’t get anxious”.

It is clear that winning in the Champions League is in Madrid’s DNA, Madrid took each and every one of their chances to secure their spot in the final — no one can fault them for that.

Special shoutout to Karim Benzema, who played better than in those 90 minutes than the rest of the season.