After the Copa del Rey Final, Real Madrid entered the final match of the season—the most important final of all—the Champions League Final at Berlin Olympic Stadium in Germany.
Their opponents were Real Madrid's sworn rivals, Barcelona!
Because Real Madrid still had to play the Copa del Rey Final, Barcelona had more time to prepare.
As early as the day after their final La Liga match, Louis Enrique led the team out of Barcelona and secretly headed to a training camp, where they began a two-week closed-door training session.
From Barcelona's management to the media reporters, everyone kept silent about the training camp, as if they were engaged in secluded cultivation. Very few people even knew where Barcelona had gone, let alone what exactly they were training for.
That put considerable pressure on Real Madrid.
There was no doubt that, in terms of historical results, Real Madrid had the clear advantage. The problem was that Barcelona had been given ample preparation time—two full weeks—which was a tremendous advantage.
Many people might not understand just how great that advantage was. Comparing it with the difficulty of playing two matches in a week made it clear.
Aside from fatigue, the most fatal difficulty of playing two matches in a week was the lack of time for targeted tactics.
It could be said that during a week with two matches, a team simply had no time to practice targeted tactics. The coaching staff could only instill theoretical concepts in meetings, while how to apply them in practice depended on the players' performance on the pitch. With no time to build chemistry or rehearse, the difficulty of the match increased tremendously.
In La Liga, the gap in strength between teams was not as wide as outsiders imagined. Once a bottom-ranked team prepared carefully, it