Luck is the word people reach for when they don't want to admit the other team has worse footballers than theirs. That is the whole argument about Real Madrid's latest escape in Athens, and it is an argument Madrid win before kickoff.
For long stretches they were second-best. AEK took the lead through Aboubakary Koita, went back in front through Stavros Pilios with fifteen minutes left, and played all night with more belief than their visitors. Then Jude Bellingham produced a clean equaliser, Kylian Mbappé answered Pilios inside three minutes, and Federico Valverde, on since the 67th, hammered one in from distance in the second minute of stoppage time. 3-2. Another one.
This is where the people shouting "they're just riding their luck" have it backwards. Madrid had 70% of the ball and 24 shots to AEK's nine. A side that dominates by that margin and still needs two comebacks and a long-range screamer to win did not play well. Both things are true at once: the collective was mediocre, and the win was earned. What keeps rescuing them is a bench deep enough to send on a man who changes the tempo and then settles the match with his right foot.
Mourinho, afterwards, was happy to downplay any grand design. "Fede has that capability... I didn't ask him to shoot," he told Movistar. He didn't have to ask. That's what talent does when you've got enough of it sitting on your bench.
AEK deserved a draw. They were sharper and braver than a squad with Madrid's resources should allow, and losing in the 92nd minute after all of it is genuinely cruel. Koita's red card after the final whistle, shown for confronting the referee, was the noise of a team that knew it had been robbed of a point by nothing it did wrong. The sympathy is earned, but it changes nothing about the lesson.
The luck theory can't explain one thing: it keeps happening. The coverage has stopped pretending a late Madrid winner is a surprise, and for good reason. You do not accidentally find a stoppage-time rescue over and over, across different managers and different squads. Madrid have spent years turning individual moments into results. There was a season when Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale traded bicycle kicks while nobody much cared whether the team around them was humming. The names usually carry the team.
The responsibility sits with how this squad is built. After four of eight league-phase matchdays, Mourinho's Madrid sit second with 12 points, level with PSG at the top and behind only on goal difference, and they have gotten there playing nowhere near their ceiling. That should worry the rest of Europe far more than a vintage night would. A good team playing well can be caught on an off day. This is an off day that still finishes 3-2.
So, no, it isn't luck. Quality shows up in the final minute, over and over, and Madrid have more of it than anyone. That's exactly why it's so maddening to watch them win games they have no business winning.
