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The Champions League’s answer to el clásico resumes in Madrid on Tuesday. Real Madrid v Bayern Munich is the most played fixture in European competition: 28 matches and counting, including 13 knockout ties. Here are six of the best.

1975-76

Semi-final Bayern won 3-1 on aggregate

Bayern and Real have never met in a European final – but that’s only if you take these things literally. In eight of their 13 knockout clashes the winning team became champions of Europe that season. A precedent was set in their first meeting 50 years ago, when Bayern beat Real en route to their third consecutive European Cup.

Bayern did the heavy lifting with an excellent 1-1 draw at the Bernabéu. Some laissez-faire defending from Franz Beckenbauer and Udo Horsmann was punished expertly by Roberto Martínez, but Bayern’s prolific goal machine Gerd Müller equalised before half-time. There was much excitement that the game would be watched by “200 million televiewers in 15 countries”. However, a production error meant none of them saw Müller’s goal, only his trademark leaping celebration.

There is footage of a notorious incident at the final whistle, when an affronted Madrid fan hared on to the pitch, chinned Müller as he ran past and then floored the referee, Erich Linemayr, with one punch. A dazed Müller was carried from the field. Real were banned from European competition for a year; the newspaper Marca said: “Uefa has assassinated its own father.” Uefa brought him back to life when they lifted the ban a few weeks later. But Madrid were so irked that they hired a team of private detectives to track down the assailant. A 26-year-old waiter from Madrid was eventually identified.

By then, Bayern were European champions again. Before the second leg of the semi-final, Müller had announced: “We will win 2-0 and I will score my 50th European Cup goal.” His predictions, like his finishing, had an eerie precision. Müller scored his 50th and 51st European Cup goals to settle the tie in the first half. Both goals, one with each foot, were typical Müller: inelegant, majestic, emphatic. The football world concurred that he was worth every penny of his £1,400-a-week wages.

1987-88

Quarter-final Real won 4-3 on aggregate

We should probably mention the infamous semi-final of 1987, when Juanito plunged his studs into Lothar Matthäus’s face. But Scott Murray covered that in a typically brilliant piece in 2014, and we should feature at least one quarter-final, given that’s where the teams are meeting this year. So let’s move forward 12 months to 1988, and a dramatic twist in the Munich snow.

Yep, snow in March. Bayern set about Real from the off – Roland Wohlfarth hit the bar after 35 seconds – and scored three goals in nine minutes either side of half-time. It was still 3-0 after 84 minutes when Norbert Eder, who scored the second from a fine Mark Hughes pass, came face to face with Kipling’s other impostor. His blind back-pass was read and punished by the predatory Emilio Butragueño.

Real celebrated their away goal wildly and could barely believe their luck when a wildly optimistic and ostensibly harmless free-kick from Hugo Sánchez slithered under the Bayern keeper, Jean-Marie Pfaff.

“We’ll win the second leg 8-0,” announced Madrid’s left-winger Rafael Gordillo. He was 25% correct, but a 2-0 win was enough. Milan Jankovic’s deflected shot and a classy volley from Míchel – made superbly by Gordillo – finished off Bayern before half-time.

1999-2000

Semi-final Real won 3-2 on aggregate

At the 1954 World Cup, West Germany lost 8-3 to Hungary in the group stage before turning the tables with a stunning 3-2 victory in the final. The twist went the other way in 1999-2000. Bayern hammered a woebegone Real Madrid twice in the second group stage, 4-2 and 4-1, only to lose 3-2 on aggregate to rejuvenated opponents two months later.

Real’s hero was their problem child, Nicolas Anelka. In his first season at Real, he scored only two goals in La Liga and was suspended by the club president after refusing to train. But he returned in time to score a goal in each leg of a heavyweight semi-final. Anelka gave Madrid an early lead in the first leg at the Bernabéu, which was doubled when Jens Jeremies accidentally ran the ball into his own net.

Bayern started ferociously in Munich, bombarding Real’s teenage keeper, Iker Casillas, and took an early lead through a spectacular volley from Carsten Jancker. But the teams knew an away goal would kill the tie at a stroke, and Anelka scored it with a stunning 31st-minute header. He was 10 yards out, moving away from goal to meet a flat, paceless cross from Sávio, while being used as an arm-rest by Samuel Kuffour. Yet somehow Anelka managed to twist his neck and slam a back-header into the far corner.

Giovane Élber gave Bayern hope early in the second half, but they needed two more goals and Real, for whom Fernando Redondo was again outstanding in midfield, saw the job through. It was the first of three successive seasons in which the winner of Bayern v Real went on to win the Champions League.

2011-12

Semi-final Bayern won 3-1 on penalties (aggregate score: 3-3)

With a weakened Chelsea waiting for the winners, the second leg of this tie felt, wrongly as it turned out, like a de facto final. It was football for grownups between two star-studded sides. Mario Gómez’s last-minute goal had given Bayern a 2-1 win in the first leg in Munich. The second leg escalated quickly; the tie was level at 3-3 after half an hour. Cristiano Ronaldo scored twice in the first 14 minutes, a penalty and a nonchalant one-on-one finish, before Real reject Arjen Robben brought Bayern level thanks to a softish penalty.

A high-class, impossibly tense contest was settled by a slightly shambolic penalty shootout. Manuel Neuer made two brilliant saves from Ronaldo, who had scored his previous 25 penalties for Real, and Kaká. Bayern also missed twice but then Sergio Ramos launched his penalty into orbit and Bastian Schweinsteiger pinged the winning kick.

Nobody knew it at the time, but this was a fork in the road of José Mourinho’s career. His Madrid side were about to dethrone possibly the greatest club side of all and would finish a triumphant La Liga campaign with a record 121 goals in 38 games. At the age of 49, Mourinho was tantalisingly close to winning the Champions League with three clubs from three countries. The reality – that he had reached (surely) his last Champions League final two years earlier – was unthinkable.

2013-14

Semi-final Real won 5-0 on aggregate

The symbolic start of Real’s second golden age in their favourite competition. They humiliated the reigning champions, a victory made even sweeter because Pep Guardiola was Bayern’s head coach, and would soon end their 12-year quest for La Décima. It was the first of four Champions League trophies in five years.

Karim Benzema was the face of a lovely team goal in the first leg in Madrid, after which nobody could decide who were favourites. That soon changed when Ramos, who missed a crucial penalty two years earlier, scored two cathartic headers in the space of four minutes.

The tie was realistically over at that point, with Bayern needing four, but Real added the most emphatic full stop courtesy of a devastating counterattack: Ángel Di María, Benzema, Gareth Bale and finally, inevitably, Ronaldo. He scored again at the death, deliberately driving a free-kick under the wall, and Real saw off Atlético Madrid in the final. The semi-final was a landmark game for them – and for Guardiola, who won the Champions League twice in his first three seasons as a manager with Barcelona but was entering the wilderness years.

2023-24

Semi-final Real won 4-3 on aggregate

Real have long celebrated the remontada: the second-leg comeback at the Bernabéu. In recent years they’ve introduced the micro-remontada. Never mind 90 minutes; against Manchester City in 2022, it took Rodrygo exactly 90 seconds to score twice in injury time to take an apparently dead tie into extra time. Two years later, Joselu, who we are contractually obliged to refer to as a Stoke and Newcastle reject, made an even more dramatic intervention.

It took a bit longer – 144 seconds between the two finishes – but Joselu’s goals took Real to the final without recourse to extra time. After a 2-2 draw in Munich, Alphonso Davies’s thrilling goal in Madrid seemed to have put Thomas Tuchel’s Bayern in the final. Then, in the 88th minute, Joselu punished a mistake from Neuer to equalise.

Real smelled blood and their predatory instincts were satisfied in the second second of injury time when Joselu volleyed in Antonio Rüdiger’s cross. The goal was made even more dramatic because of the first major video assistant intervention in the Bayern-Real wars. It was flagged offside but each replay looked more ominous for Bayern. After an interminable 80 seconds, the goal was given and Real were through to play Borussia Dortmund in the final. And for the eighth time, the winner of Bayern v Real became champions of Europe.