Who tempts you with the heavens before taking you to the broiling depths of the inferno? Real Madrid. What is the name of the white tiger with 11 heads that stalks its prey while purring sweetly? Real Madrid. Who is Spain’s 13th apostle? Real Madrid. What doesn’t need a key to escape its chains, because when all is revealed in the ghastly light, those chains are exposed as its own bleached ribs? Real Madrid.

What force enchants your dreams with groves of manzanilla olives, the sun on your back and the ghost of a kiss on your skin, only to be awoken under the smother of an eiderdown pillow? Real Madrid. What howling baby was born in the darkness, still lives there, even, but now arrives robed in papal white? Real Madrid.

What is everywhere and nowhere? Whose face launched 5,000 ships? What brings a certainty only offered by death? Which football club crowns themselves? Real Madrid.

The Spanish giants are the world’s most storied club – and by many estimates, the best supported. They have one of the best two squads in the world. They have the manager with the most European titles. They are one of its richest sides.

These factors are enough to explain why on Saturday they will play to win their 15th European Cup (only one other club has even seven). But for parts of the Madrid fanbase, there is more to it.

“They say at the Bernabeu (Madrid’s home stadium) there is a god and he wears a white shirt – and, who knows? Maybe that is true,” Madrid head coach Carlo Ancelotti told UK newspaper The Times this week. The Italian is a devout Catholic who prays daily and who, as a child, spent hours each evening reading the Bible.

“But if you make a mistake, the god in white punishes you,” he added. But under Ancelotti’s stewardship, almost unilaterally, Madrid have played the role of the punisher rather than the sinner.

In the three most recent editions of the Champions League, Ancelotti’s side have made a string of improbable comebacks.

On their way to their most recent triumph in 2021-22, they were 2-0 down on aggregate in the round of 16 to Paris Saint-Germain with 30 minutes to play – before a 17-minute hat-trick from Karim Benzema sent them through. Against Chelsea, in the next round, they were 4-3 behind on aggregate with 10 minutes left – before prevailing 5-4 after extra time. Three weeks later, in the semi-finals against Manchester City, they were trailing 5-3 on aggregate in the 90th minute of the second leg – but Rodrygo scored two goals in the dying minutes and Benzema completed the miracle with an extra-time penalty.

The recoveries continued.

Madrid were 2-0 down to Liverpool in last year’s round of 16 first leg at Anfield but roared back to a 5-2 win on the night.

They were twice behind against defending European champions City in this season’s quarter-finals. Perhaps most fantastically, there was their resurrection against Bayern Munich in the semi-finals last month. Heading out with less than five minutes of the second leg remaining, Joselu, derided during four unimpressive seasons with English clubs Stoke City and Newcastle United from 2015-19, was reborn as Lazarus and scored two late goals off the bench. This will be Madrid’s sixth Champions League final in 11 years.

Pascal’s wager is a philosophical argument for the pragmatism of believing in God. If you do not believe in God, there are two options: He does not exist, and so Heaven does not exist either, or He does exist, and your non-belief disqualifies you from entering Heaven. Neither outcome, in this framework, is positive.

But if you believe in God, the outcomes are either He does not exist, and so Heaven does not exist either – or that He does, so you can enter Heaven. For Pascal, a 17th-century French mathematician, the only decision that comes with a positive outcome is belief. The same applies to Madrid. You don’t have to believe in them but their results show trust is only logical.

Perhaps that is why Pope Francis, the Argentine priest born Jorge Bergoglio, has been gifted Madrid shirts by the past two FIFA presidents, Sepp Blatter and Gianni Infantino. Is favour from the highest seat of Roman Catholicism enough? Not for some.

Antonio Jose Castano Gutierrez, known as Tonin, or ‘El Torero’ (bullfighter), runs a bar in the south east of the Spanish capital, close to the stadium of fellow La Liga side Rayo Vallecano, that reflects his love of the club. Indeed, Tonin is one of Madrid’s most famous fans — recently recovered from a life-threatening cancer battle — who is now back wearing his trademark cape, with the club’s permission, in the Bernabeu’s north end.

In 2015, Madrid were seeking to mount a comeback against city rivals Atletico in the Copa del Rey, Spain’s equivalent to the FA Cup in English football. In his bar, Tonin made a Ouija board with several of the club’s other famous supporters, attempting to summon the spirit of Juanito — Madrid’s star player in the 1980s, who died in a car crash, at age 37, in 1992. They set up an altar in the corner of his bar — Juanito’s corner, which now remains there permanently.

“Since the time of Ferenc Puskas and Alfredo Di Stefano (stars of the Madrid sides who won the first five European Cups ever played, between 1956-60), the little goblins sleep on the Santiago Bernabeu pitch. They are there because, otherwise, the explanation could not be more surreal, but that’s how it is,” Tonin tells The Athletic.

“All the alarms go off and everyone knows that until the last minute of the game, there is faith and hope for a comeback. This sentiment was provoked by Juanito, who, with Real Madrid’s historic comebacks in the 1980s, said the mythical phrase, ‘90 minuti en el Bernabeu son multi longo’ (’90 minutes in the Bernabeu is very long’).

“Since then, all the rivals know it: scoring a goal against Madrid or winning against Madrid is a death trap because they know that, in the end, we will come back.”

Later, Spanish sports newspaper Diario AS restaged the ceremony, placing a photo of Tonin and the Ouija board on its front page. It sparked a huge controversy in Spain.

“That was a mistake. Our passion made us make a mistake. We took it as something funny, we wanted to scare the other guys (Atletico Madrid),” says Tonin.

“We spoke to (Juanito’s) family, I’m close to his children, his ex-wife, his sister… I told him that we had done it in a nice way but it went wrong and we’re sorry. They know us, they know that I have Juanito tattooed on my back. It went wrong, we lost in the Copa del Rey, but since then, we haven’t lost in the European Cup.”

Tonin is not the only supporter who believes that a form of mysticism stalks Madrid’s European success.

Iker Jimenez is a journalist and TV host, with a particular interest in the paranormal. He hosts a show, Cuarto Milenio (‘The Fourth Millennium’), which investigates mysteries and enigmas. It is the longest-running programme on Spain’s free-to-air Cuatro channel.

“(Real Madrid) is a mystery worthy of three or dossiers on Cuarto Milenio,” he told El Desmarque this month, after Real Madrid’s semi-final comeback. “When (Bayern striker) Harry Kane stands alone in front of the goal, he sends it into the side-netting. Something happens there. What something? You have to see his face and in his face – Mr Kane knew perfectly well what was going to happen.

“This seems like a good spell, but it is always happening.”

What is behind this secret?

Mystic Uri Geller claims to have powers of psychokinesis – the ability to move objects without physical interaction with them – and over a 50-year career, has become involved in football on several occasions. He placed energy-infused crystals behind the goal to help Exeter City in 1997 – although they lost the game concerned 5-1, but swears to have helped Reading earn promotion in 2002. Most famously, he flew over Wembley in a helicopter during England’s Euro 96 match against Scotland, claiming he moved the ball just before Scotland’s Gary McAllister missed a crucial penalty.

“When you have thousands, or tens of thousands, or millions of people supporting one team, there is an energy produced,” Geller tells The Athletic. “And this is actually scientific – it produces almost a subliminal, energetic power that protects the team, bringing them good luck. This is why most home matches are won by the home team – because they’ve got their massive power of fans in the stadium.

“With Real Madrid, they have such a fanbase, it’s almost like a religion. They believe in it so deeply that they pray for it. The players have all kinds of rituals – they either carry a medallion with them or they wear a certain colour, they kiss the grass, or you can see them doing the cross to Jesus Christ, to God. This empowers their belief system, and it empowers the fans.

“Spain has a deep base of religion, so if you have that belief system (that) you’re going to win, no matter where you are, you are activating that energy, which drives into the chromosomes, the DNA, the makeup of the player, and it drives the adrenaline in that player’s brain to score a goal.

“There is something paranormal, something psychic, something supernatural, about the team and about their fans.”

Tonin agrees. “It’s as if you put on the costume of a superhero when the European Cup arrives (rather than fixtures in Spanish domestic football),” he says. “On that day, the look in the crowd’s eyes and even how they behave is different from any league game. That cold look, that look that we are going to make it. The marriage is total.”

Has it spread to the Madrid players and their opponents? Let them speak for themselves.

“It’s difficult to explain what happens on Champions League nights at the Bernabeu,” said Luka Modric, a Madrid midfielder since 2012, who could win his sixth Champions League title this weekend. We must ignore the myth of Real Madrid,” said Bayern coach Thomas Tuchel before last month’s semi-final. It’s happened again… because it’s happened so many times now it’s something inexplicable,” Ancelotti said after Bayern were unable to overcome that myth. “It’s something magical, there’s no explanation for it.”

When I was asked to explore Madrid and mysticism, I had my doubts. I still do. The temptation is to laugh, and I have. But several of the club’s central figures believe in it – and this is what does make sense.

Existence is unpredictable and unknowable, but for millions, Madrid have been a stillness in a revolving world. Amid all superclubs, their fallow periods have been the most fertile. Other clubs are wealthy, other clubs are storied, but Madrid’s singularity gives the illusion of the fantastic.

Set amid a devout and superstitious fanbase, the actuality of a supernatural force doesn’t matter as much as the belief that such a force exists. Football is a psychological sport and Madrid’s history, in a country whose scars are still surfacing, counts for more than most. It is easy to evoke a collective belief because they have prayed and been answered before.

Madrid are not a cosmic wink. But if any club could bend space, warp time, defy the undeniable and breathe oxygen in a world of smoke, it’s them.

• The Athletic report