Cristiano Ronaldo's stoppage-time penalty ends Juventus fightback as Gianluigi Buffon sees red

An entire tie can change, a whole dynamic can change, but it seems one fundamental of the Champions League will never change: Real Madrid always win, no matter what.

Even the trophy’s most successful side, who have done pretty much everything you can in the competition’s 63 years, had never won a game in this manner. This was proper narrative drama, from the sensational three-goal Juventus comeback to the stark set-piece of one shot, delivered by one of the greatest players in history - just after one of the greatest goalkeepers ever had been sent off on what might have been his last European appearance.

That only added to the tension as Cristiano Ronaldo was made to wait for Wojciech Szczesny to get to the line, but, of course, it made no difference. None of it did. A defiant Juventus had pushed Real to the very brink of what would have been statistically the most sensational comeback in Champions League history, as both sides went right to the limit, but the champions - perhaps predictably - just had more in them.

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The fair question now is whether a test as traumatic as this causes some fatal damage in the core of this Real side - but the manner of Ronaldo’s emphatic penalty indicates not.

Nonetheless, Juventus started by following Roma’s lead, and doing what seems to be a fundamental requirement for recovery jobs of this scale: a fast start. This couldn’t have been much quicker.

Mandzukic had the ball in the net within 75 seconds, powering the ball past Keylor Navas from a pin-point Sami Khedira cross.

That instantly altered the dynamic and created some doubt for the single most assured team in the competition, but in more ways than one. It wasn’t just that the nature of the contest had changed, but also that a weakness in defence had been emphatically exposed.

With Sergio Ramos suspended, and Jesus Vallejo replacing him, Real seemed to have no answer to the power of Mandzukic in the air. They just didn’t have their absent captain’s command. Chaos ensued any time it looked like the ball might go there.

Real's only response was the routine that has admittedly served them so well through this series of Champions League victories. That was to regain command when the ball was on the ground, particularly in the middle of the pitch, through the three players that have been as important to Real as Ronaldo: Luka Modric, Toni Kroos and Casemiro.

They did that and began to cause some chaos in the Juventus box. Unlike the calamitous first leg, though, the Italian backline didn’t lose control this time around.

They were standing up stronger, while Gigi Buffon was rolling back the years with how he was getting himself down to stop so much.

This was also the deep challenge for Juve, though. They were going to have to truly extend themselves to pull off a comeback away from home that had never been done in 63 years of the competition. They sought to do so by stretching themselves to resolutely defend against Real’s rampaging attack while causing the hosts problems themselves.

Juve did seem to eventually settle into a rhythm, though, as they realised they should sit and wait for opportunities to cross from the right for Mandzukic.

That was exactly how they got the second goal, too.

There was now a very different mood around the Bernabeu, something they just weren’t used to. The crowd began to turn on Gareth Bale, who was so ineffective that he was taken off at half-time.

It wasn’t really Ronaldo’s night by that point either, mind, as he had twice been flattened by Juve defenders, with no foul given.

Then again, that kind of thing has been said about the Portuguese before. He and Real however hadn’t quite faced this situation before. Even Kroos and Modric were misplacing key passes.

There were bigger mistakes to come, and they were all the worse because those warnings weren’t heeded.

On 60 minutes, the effervescent and yet so efficient Douglas Costa played in another cross. This one was nowhere near as dangerous as Khedira’s, but that didn’t matter. Real were adding to their own problems. Navas somehow spilled the ball, and Blaise Matuidi was left to poke the ball in.

It was quite a goal to get for your first in the Champions League. It was now quite the contest.

With the tie so perfectly in the balance, maybe the best attack in the world was forced to go fully forward against the best defence in the world, who were getting beaten right back.

Ronaldo was again moving dangerously, Buffon and Chiellini embracing defiantly with every challenge.

We’d seen so many of these images before, but never in this utterly consuming context.

It was only too predictable, then, that a tie like this would go to unpredictable extremes. As stoppage time draw to a close, Lucas Vazquez went down in the box under the challenge of Mehdi Benatia. Penalty.

This could have been Buffon’s moment, except he was sent off for remonstrating. The Bernabeu actually applauded him off, as Szczesny slowly made his way on, and the wonder was whether the reaction would have been the same had they not been awarded a penalty.

There was evidently no doubt about Ronaldo stepping up, though. There is just no doubt about Real.

They can go through anything, and still find a more epic way to win.