Villarreal’s Champions League win over Bayern Munich was pure magic. Can they finish the job?

There were two minutes to go and the most extraordinary story was about to be written, or so it goes. The football team from a tiny, unremarkable little town in Spain that had spent most of its history in the regional third tier and was playing its first Champions League campaign, a miracle in itself, had just been awarded a penalty. Score, and it would take them into extra time in front of their fans and against a side who were down to 10 men, bringing the final of the biggest competition there is within touching distance.

Vila Real has a population of 50,577. No place this small had ever had a team win a European trophy, and no one there ever really imagined that they would either. At least not until now. This moment was huge — inconceivably so, one that shouldn’t have happened in the first place and wouldn’t happen again. The man on whose shoulders it lay knew that. You probably know what happened next: Juan Roman Riquelme’s penalty was saved by Arsenal goalkeeper Jens Lehmann and Villarreal’s dream disintegrated.

Riquelme never watched it again, but he didn’t need to and nor did anyone else; this was burned into their brains. In the stands at El Madrigal was an 8-year-old boy from the town, sitting with his mother and his brother. He had grabbed a man he didn’t know when they got the penalty and hugged him; now, he broke down in tears.

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Sixteen years later to the month, Pau Torres was there again, only down on the pitch this time. These days Pau — “el xiquet del poble,” they call him, “the boy from the town” — plays for Villarreal. He’s part of the team that, on Wednesday night, took them closer to reaching another Champions League semifinal than they have ever been since, by claiming a famous 1-0 win over Bayern Munich in the first leg of their quarterfinal at El Madrigal. Except the stadium is now called the Ceramica, after…