IT is maybe something to do with the extraordinary success that Real Madrid have enjoyed in the European Cup and Champions League during the past 63 years.

Or it could just be that in a bustling city with a population of more than three million the fact that their team is competing in the biggest game in club football is easily overlooked.

Perhaps it is simply down to the Spaniards’ wonderfully laissez-faire attitude towards life? Big game against Liverpool in Kiev? What big game against Liverpool in Kiev? Whatever will be will be.

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But to say that Madrid was in the grip of Champions League final 
fever this week would be a gross exaggeration.

Not even the prospect of winning what would be a record 13th title – 
AC Milan, with seven, are a distant second when it comes to victories in Europe’s premier club competition – has caused so much as a ripple of excitement to break out.

It was, unlike in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen or Dundee, nigh on impossible to find someone decked out in the famous Los Blancos replica kit ahead of the weekend showdown.

It is, with Real’s allocation a mere 16,626 tickets for the match in the Olimpiyskiy Stadium and many of them not being bought due to exorbitant prices, pushing it to say everybody is in transit to Ukraine as well.

But there is, after back-to-back triumphs over Atletico Madrid in Milan and Juventus in Cardiff last year, a clear confidence among their supporters, former players and pundits about the game against their English opponents.

Agustin Rodriguez, the goalkeeper who played for Real Madrid when they lost the European Cup final 1-0 to Liverpool in the Parc des Princes in Paris in 1981, spoke to the media this week about the impending rematch.

Agustin, as he is known, doesn’t anticipate the current side experiencing the same difficulties the team he was a member of had in what was Real’s, then six-time winners, first appearance in the final for 15 years. Much has changed in the intervening period.

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“We were a very good, tough team with many very good players from the youth academy,” he said. “But it was difficult for us to score goals. This does not happen now there is a guy like Cristiano Ronaldo who can score 40 goals a season. We were a Fiat 127 and they were a Ferrari.

“A week before the match I had 0sat with Pelé in a hotel near the Santiago Bernabéu stadium and he predicted that we would lose, because Real Madrid had been out of Europe for a long time. Liverpool had greater sporting and economic potential back then. But that final was the first time we had been advertising adidas. Then with Ramón Mendoza , the club went into orbit. It is true that money corrupts, but in sports it is very important.”

Indeed it is. The adidas store at the corner of Calle Gran Via – the Spanish Broadway – and Calle de la Montera proclaims that Real are on the “Road to K13V”.

A giant picture of Zinedine Zidane the moment he connected with the ball to score that iconic opening goal in the Champions League final against Bayer Leverkusen at Hampden in 2002 adorns the wall of the shop.

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This has, by their own high standards, been a poor season domestically for Real. They have finished third in La Liga behind runaway winners Barcelona and their city rivals Atletico. But in the Champions League, the tournament they have won three times in the last four years, they have excelled. 

They emerged bruised from the Group of Death which contained Tottenham Hotspur and Borussia Dortmund. In the first knockout round, they accounted for free-spending Paris Saint-Germain, who many fancied to triumph after their lavish summer signing spree, while Juventus and Bayern Munich were overcome in the quarter-finals and semi-finals respectively. 

For their supporters, who have grown used to success on the continent since Mendoza revitalised their fortunes after becoming chairman in the 1980s, the Champions League remains the holy grail.

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Torres, a Real Madrid fan, comes out of the club shop, which is doing a brisk trade ahead of the big game, at the Bernabéu clutching a bag of official merchandise. Like all of those who share his allegiances, victory at the highest level in Europe is expected, not just welcomed.

“Beating Barcelona in La Liga is obviously important,” he said. “El Clasico is the biggest game of the season. It is a disaster when Real lose. But the Champions League is what remains most important. Zidane has always done well in Europe, as a player and as a manager.

“Nobody takes anything for granted, but there is a belief we will win and 
win well.”

The coverage in the national press would back up what Torres says.

“Real Madrid 292, Liverpool 50” reads a headline in Marca, the sports daily newspaper. It refers to the cumulative number of trophies the members of the Spanish and English squads have won. Not hugely important, you might have thought. But for the writer it is crucial.

“Real have won the first duel – that of experience,” he states. “Most of the Liverpool players only have minor titles in second-tier championships. It is a brutal difference.”

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This exciting young Liverpool team put together by Jurgen Klopp, with Scot Andy Robertson at left and their front three of Roberto Firminio, Sadio Mane and Mo Salah, was certainly comfortable in the last two rounds against Manchester City and Roma.

John, sipping a beer in a bar on Calle de Hortaleza just off Calle Gran Via, is undeterred by the challenge.

“Real haven’t lost a Champions League final since that game with Liverpool in 1981,” he said. “But the fact that it is them we are playing isn’t something that worries anyone. With Ronaldo, if Real play to their best they will win.”