Borussia Dortmund head coach Edin Terzic said before the second leg of their Champions League semifinal with Paris Saint-Germain that if football games were decided on the favorites, his side wouldn't even have made it to this stage.
Now, the Bundesliga's current fifth-placed team are in their second Champions League final in London in 11 years.
Indeed, it was Dortmund, not the favorites, who looked more in control. It was Dortmund, whose squad is valued at less than half of their opponents, who landed the knockout blow. And it is Dortmund, a club whose majority owners are their fans and not a country, who are in the final.
"To make the final, where it all started in 2013, hats off," Marco Reus told Amazon afterward. "It's crazy that we're in the final. No one thought it was possible."
"There is always a team that makes the quarterfinal that people don't expect to be there and we wanted to be that team this year," Edin Terzic said afterward.
"I will drink more than one glass [of red wine] tonight," said Borussia Dortmund CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke.
Like all great sides, they needed their fair slice of luck. A deflection from defender Nico Schlotterbeck's went just wide instead of going in. Mats Hummels' sliding tackle clipped PSG's Ousmane Dembele........