The 2023-24 European soccer season will meet its conclusion on Saturday with the Champions League Final between Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund.
For Madrid, it’s business as usual for the most successful club in the competition’s history. Los Blancos are looking for their 15th Champions League title and their sixth since 2013-14.
On the other hand, this is the climax of a Cinderella run that nobody saw coming for Dortmund, who were a +5000 outsider when the tournament began in September.
Very few people even expected Dortmund to advance to the knockout stages after they were drawn into the “Group of Death” with Paris Saint-Germain, Newcastle United and AC Milan. Those skeptics grew even louder as the BVB struggled to find consistency in the Bundesliga.
But Dortmund kept finding ways to win and found themselves with a favorable Round of 16 opponent, PSV Eindhoven, who they dispatched without much fuss.
They would then defeat Atletico Madrid in a wild two-leg battle before shutting out PSG across 180 minutes to advance to the final.
Though Dortmund had the tougher group assignment, Madrid was faced with a much more daunting path in the knockout stages. Los Blancos took down RB Leipzig, Manchester City and Bayern Munich en route to Wembley, all the while running away with the title in La Liga.
Real Madrid have been one of the best teams in the world for years, but there was a common criticism (albeit a nitpicky one) surrounding this iteration of Los Blancos when comparing them to the other elites: That Madrid was too reliant on individual moments of magic and their process wasn’t as sound as the likes of Manchester City, Liverpool or Bayern Munich.
Those criticisms have gone by the wayside this year.
Not only is Madrid still benefiting from the brilliance of individual stars like Vinicius Jr., Jude Bellingham and Rodrygo, but Madrid’s statistical profile is among the best in Europe.
Defensively Madrid stood in a class of its own in La Liga by allowing just 26 goals and 35.4 expected goals in 38 matches, and when you couple those elite suppression numbers with the wealth of attacking talent, you have a recipe for a ton of success.
Not only will it be hard for Dortmund to generate chances against this Real Madrid defense, but the BVB will also have their hands full with slowing down the Spanish champion’s attack.
Dortmund has been able to squeeze its way through to the Champions League Final through a variety of methods and they deserve heaps of credit for doing that, but their overall performance this season has been underwhelming for a team in this spot. Dortmund finished fifth in the Bundesliga in 2023-24 and their statistical profile suggests that was a fair result.
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What’s most concerning is that Dortmund’s defensive numbers were largely mediocre and they finished in the middle of the pack in expected goals against. That will not be good enough against Real Madrid.
Dortmund’s best path to success in this match is to keep things as tidy as possible and focus on clogging things up rather than taking the game to Madrid. But given this is a final, one goal for Madrid will force Dortmund to come out of its shell and open this contest up. That could lead to the opening of the floodgates.
If the Spaniards get one, they should be able to push for more and more. This could be a rout.
Recommendation: Real Madrid -2.5 goals (+520, FanDuel)
