Dani Carvajal – Real Madrid’s unlikely Champions League hero who laid the foundations with Di Stefano

“I don’t know what to say, it’s just immense happiness,” said Real Madrid’s Dani Carvajal, minutes after the final whistle of Saturday’s Champions League victory over Borussia Dortmund at Wembley.

Carvajal, the team’s right-back, was the unlikely scorer in their crucial opening goal in a 2-0 win, with Vinicius Junior’s late goal securing Madrid a 15th European Cup.

Madrid had been on the back foot for a significant part of the match and Dortmund missed a series of chances to spring a major surprise before Carvajal (170cm) leapt highest to score with a header 17 minutes from time.

“We knew it would be a tough match; in the first half they were very superior but we came out alive,” Carvajal said on Movistar TV. “We knew our moment would come, and it came, and we have the 15th.”

Carvajal scores the vital first goal (Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images)

The 32-year-old knows better than most Madrid’s history in this competition and the club’s unique talent for absorbing blows before delivering the final blow himself.

Given all of Madrid’s magic and mythology in the Champions League, some would argue that Carvajal’s moment against Dortmund was destined to happen. Shortly after joining Madrid’s youth system, he was selected to join the legendary Alfredo Di Stefano in laying the foundation stone for the club’s new training center, Valdebebas.

Two decades later, Carvajal was asked what it meant to surpass Di Stefano’s tally of five European Cups and join another hero of the 1950s and 1960s, Paco Gento (who died aged 88 in January 2022). ) on the list with six.

Laid the first brick at Valdebebas as a youth player alongside Alfredo Di Stefano

Scored the opening goal of tonight’s Champions League final to win his 6th CL title and the club’s 15th

Great Dani Carvajal pic.twitter.com/Y6Ip4xxrRb

-Kay Murray (@KayLMurray) June 1, 2024

“When I heard the final whistle, I was really emotional,” he said in the post-match press conference. “I came here when I was little, 21 years ago now, and we are still making history with this team. It seemed impossible to match Gento. It’s something fantastic. I hope more will come, but now we are here with him.

Carvajal also shares six with teammates Nacho and Luka Modric – but his journey to such a coveted place in the club’s history books has been far from straightforward.

A lifelong Madrid fan, Carvajal was born in Leganes, just south of the Spanish capital. He entered the club’s youth system at the age of 10, shortly after Madrid’s ninth Champions League victory in 2002, capped by Zinedine Zidane’s spectacular winner against Bayer Leverkusen.

Never the biggest on any of his teams, the young Carvajal possessed a blend of technical quality and tenacity that coaches and teammates appreciated. While still a teenager, he was part of a team of young Castilla stars that won promotion to Spain’s second division. But while his more visibly talented teammates Alvaro Morata and Jese Rodriguez were called upon to play for the first team under coach Jose Mourinho, Carvajal was instead sold to Leverkusen for €5 million (4 .3 £; 5.4 million dollars) in July 2012 without having made a senior. Appearance in La Liga.

Not everyone at the club agreed with the call, as former Castilla winger Juanfran Moreno said. Athleticism.

“I played in front of Carvajal (on the right wing) and I knew I had a plane behind me. I knew he was going to make history with Real Madrid,” Juanfran said. “Mourinho killed me for saying in public that I didn’t know why he went to Bayer. I knew he was ready for the first team from his first day at Castilla. It was so clear.

Carvajal’s quality was also evident as he quickly settled in at Leverkusen and was nominated for the Bundesliga best XI for 2012-13. After Madrid activated a €6.5 million buyout clause the following summer, he quickly won a first-team place under new coach Carlo Ancelotti and played a key role as Madrid ended to his long wait for a 10th “Decima” Champions League the following June. .

Since then, Carvajal has been every Madrid coach’s first choice right-back. He is the only player to have started each of the six Champions League final victories over the last 11 years. Three under Zidane from 2016 to 2018, and three more under Ancelotti in 2014, 2022 and now 2024.

Carvajal’s determination and will to win means that he, along with fellow former Castilla players Nacho and Lucas Vazquez, and Galacticos Modric and Toni Kroos, have formed the dressing room leadership group this season. This group knows what it takes to succeed in Madrid and also does not hesitate to report teammates who do not put in the necessary effort.

“The attitude and professionalism of Nacho and Carvajal on a daily basis are an example for their teammates,” said another former Castilla player, Jorge Casado. Athleticism. “You can see their influence, their contagious motivation to keep improving, to keep winning trophies.”

In the first half against Dortmund on Saturday, Carvajal was one of the Madrid players who wasn’t close to their best. A lack of communication with defensive partner Antonio Rudiger allowed Karim Adeyemi to create the underdogs’ first big chance of the evening, although the right-back came back on this occasion to make a vital block.

There was nothing at all that Carvajal could do about Adeyemi’s speed as half-time approached, as the Dortmund left winger easily outpaced him and slotted home a shot, which Courtois well stopping.

However, things changed after half-time and Carvajal was among the Madrid players to come out determined not to lose. Shortly after the break, he met a Kroos corner with a flashing header, but the ball flew too high. Around the hour mark, he arrived unmarked at the far post, but was unable to put enough power into his shot.

There was no denying it, though – rising superbly to power another Kroos corner into the net in the key moment of the final.

Carvajal scores the opener (Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

“This year I’m still going up in the corners,” Carvajal said on Movistar TV on Saturday evening, with a smile. “Determination has been the key for me, for my career. I warned them with one that was going too high and with the second one I had to score.

Carvajal was a surprise scorer, considering he had only found the net in one of his previous 88 Champions League games. But something has changed this season. He qualified for Saturday’s final having scored five goals and provided five assists, as well as carrying out his defensive duties as a constant presence in an otherwise injured defense – goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois and center backs Eder Militao and David Alaba having missed most of the campaign. .

Most of these attacking interventions had also come at key moments – and were generally more down to his character and determination than any technical brilliance. They include a 99th-minute winner that saw Madrid come back from 0-2 down to beat Almeria 3-2 in the league at the Bernabeu in January, and hammer home an 85th-minute free ball to equalize in the Super Cup semi-final. Spain. against Atletico Madrid. Madrid won both of these trophies.

Saturday’s man-of-the-match performance could mean even more to Carvajal, given that some of his previous Champions League wins have been bittersweet for him. He left the field injured during the 2016 victory against Atletico Madrid in Milan and the 2018 success against Liverpool in kyiv.

These injuries caused him to miss the 2016 European Championship and the 2018 World Cup for Spain. But he will be part of this summer’s Euros as a key member of the XI and a very influential voice in the dressing room.

(Top photo: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)