How do you guys feel about the concept of luck? I have seen this get thrown around for years in reference to our winnings specifically. From both our own fans as well as others it is often suggested that our incredible knockout runs are at least partially, and not to insignificant degree (given how frequently it is brought up), the result of us being lucky.

I am of the opinion that ‘luck’ plays almost no factor in our, or any teams, success. This is the highest level of sport, the margins are so small, I just don’t see how ‘luck’ can play any role in a teams overall success. Allison deflecting the ball off of Vini is not ‘lucky’ it’s a matter of effective pressing and poor goal keeping, nothing lucky about it. These are the best athletes in the world, they aren’t relying/using luck to win anything. Obviously it’s hard to give any concrete argument against luck as it is a fundamentally open ended concept, but I just don’t understand how one can look at our CL run last year, for example, and suggest luck played a factor. We didn’t stage comebacks because we were lucky. We were the better team for the time that it mattered. We simply took our chances and shut theirs down when it mattered.

Luck suggests that you achieve a desired result without your own ability factoring into said result. I don’t think this has ever been true for Real Madrid or really for any top sporting institution. I think luck is an incredibly overused term in football.