One day, Diego Simeone said, in those quiet moments when they are alone with their thoughts and memories, Real Madrid’s players will think of Atlético Madrid and how they made them suffer. But the real trauma, he knows, will for ever be theirs. In the final moments before this latest European derby, the first at the Metropolitano, a huge mosaic had declared that following Atlético “kills me … and gives me life”. At the end of it, once fate had found another, still crueller way of twisting the knife, of delivering the inevitable, the coach pushed his footballers and his fans together, applauding so hard his hands hurt almost as much as their hearts.
“I am proud of them,” he said afterwards. “I am happy, honestly. I am happy. I am happy. Why? Because we competed in a way that was exemplary. We might not have been able to beat Real Madrid in the Champions League. Sure. Of course. We couldn’t. But they had a bad time of it, every time. They will remember us for a long time. While enjoying having beating us, but knowing and saying to themselves: ‘Facing that lot was messed up, look how hard they made it for us, always.’ Our people leave with the pain of having been knocked out, of course, but knowing that their team gave everything. I go in peace. Losing, but in peace.”
Peace might not be the word most would choose; torment, perhaps, and there was a kind of understandable finality in the way Simeone expressed it, as if defeat was definitive. Recently, Carlo Ancelotti suggested that Atlético had a thorn in their side. Dani Ceballos had been even more explicit. Lisbon 2014 and Milan 2016 had hurt Simeone, he said. And, oh, how they hurt. “He hasn’t overcome those two finals,” Ceballos claimed then and he still could not on Wednesday night: no redemption here, no closure. One Real song runs: “Years go by and everything remains the same / losing finals to our Real / it doesn’t matter what they say / they’ll never forget it / they cried in Lisbon / they cried in Milan.”
In Lisbon, in Milan, in Zaragoza and in Madrid, at the Calderón and the Metropolitano. This was the sixth time these teams have met in Europe, and the sixth time Real won. In 1959, a 2-1 win each took them to a semi-final replay in Zaragoza, Ferenc Puskas and Alfredo Di Stéfano eventually scoring in another 2-1 victory and ever since the margins have been fine but the chasm wide, becoming a characteristic.
When Atlético were denied in the European Cup final by Bayern Munich in 1974, Hans-Georg Schwarzenbeck scoring from 30 yards in the last minute of extra time to force a replay (which Atléti lost 4-0), the president, Vicente Calderón, called them El Pupas, the jinxed ones, a bundle of bad luck, an accident waiting to happen. It became their identity, which didn’t please everyone, seeing an excuse for failure. As Michael Robinson used to put it, only Atlético “presumed to lose”.
Simeone’s arrival changed that, or so it seemed. In 2013 they won a Copa del Rey final against Real Madrid at the Bernabéu, their first derby win since 1999. Exactly a year later they won the league. That famous banner at the Bernabéu, a mock-up of a classified ad asking for a “worthy rival for a decent derby” had been answered. No more El Pupas, no more jinxed ones. Goodbye, curse. Except, oh: in Europe it was different, Real their executioner. A week after winning the league, they lost the Champions League final in Lisbon, starting a run of four consecutive continental meetings all with the same outcome.
Sergio Ramos’s 93rd-minute goal had done in it Lisbon. In the quarter-final in 2015, the first game finished 0-0; the second was won with an 88th-minute goal from Javier “Chicharito” Hernández. The following year, they reached another final, this time in Milan: Real won it on penalties. The year after that, Real won the semi-final first leg 3-0 but within 15 minutes of the second, Atlético were 2-0 up, the comeback close until Karim Benzema’s moment of magic ended it. A biblical storm saw out the last ever European night at the Vicente Calderón, the old place closed with defeat. Now here they were at the Metropolitano, the new place opened the same way.
Extra time had felt inevitable: this was the ninth time these two clubs – the only city rivals to play a European Cup final, let alone two of them – had gone to extra time since 2013. So did Real’s players running across the pitch celebrating at an end that some inside the stadium hadn’t even realised was the end. As Jude Bellingham put it, Real had lost, drawn and won on the same night. Most of all they had won, again. “We’re very good at that,” he said, “at finding a way”.
The way was extraordinary again, unbelievable and yet so very believable, something cumulative about the catalogue of cruelty for Atlético: not just beaten on penalties – “a lottery,” Ancelotti called it – but with VAR ruling out Julián Alvarez’s strike. The tiniest thing, so huge.
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Alvarez said he didn’t know, he hadn’t felt that he had touched the ball twice. On the halfway line, Kylian Mbappé had spotted it. On the bench, so had the Real goalkeeper coach Luis Llopis, although Ancelotti reckoned that by the time they had said anything, the VAR was already looking at it. “It was funny. We saw it and started shouting, I’ve never seen that before,” Rodrygo said. “The referee says that when Julián puts his foot down, he touches the ball, but the ball doesn’t move,” Simeone said. “The ball doesn’t move, not even a little bit, but I imagine that when the VAR calls him …”
At this point, Simeone laughed. And then he challenged his interrogator and the rest of those in the room to deliver their judgment. The truth was that many of them were, genuinely, ill-equipped to do so. Fewer still wanted to. “There’s never been VAR in a shootout but, well … OK,” he continued. “They must have seen him touch it; I want to believe that. I ask you … did you see it? Did you watch it? Did he touch it or not? Did you see it or not? Come on, don’t be scared. Anyone here who saw two touches, put your hands up. Come on, hands up. Hands up. Hands up. Anyone who says he touched it twice …? No one? Right. Next question.”
It was still early, a bit soon for the debates to reach the pitch they inevitably will, let alone the conspiracies. At around the same time in a room to the side of that, Thibaut Courtois, whose club is embarked upon a campaign against the referees, said: “I’m a bit sick of the victimism, always crying about things like this. In the end, the referees don’t have the intention of benefiting anyone, neither in Spain nor in Europe. They have seen it clearly and that’s why they have given it like that. They’re human but in the VAR they have lots of cameras and have seen it clearly. I don’t know, I reckon if you’re winning 1-0 from the first minute, and then you don’t look for the second, that’s the error.”
That was a line that would be repeated a lot, a familiar accusation aimed at Simeone. Here, it felt like a facile one, harder to sustain, and Courtois might have known that better than anyone. He had made eight saves here and a superb stop in the first leg, where for an hour Atlético had dominated. Jan Oblak had not made a significant stop, including in the shootout when he had been close to Antonio Rüdiger’s final kick. “We had doubts between Endrick and Rüdiger [taking it], but I saw Endrick’s face and I said: ‘No, better Rüdiger does,’” Ancelotti said afterwards.
Winning via a shootout, Ancelotti said, was a toss of the coin, and it fell their way. If Real had looked there for the taking, if Atlético could have avoided being in the hands of fate, perhaps it had been because of the approach Atlético had taken. “We controlled very well a very good team with very good players,” Simeone said. But Real aren’t very good, it was put to him. “Pfff,” he replied. “I think you’re being very harsh on an incredible team: Mbappé, Vinícius, Bellingham, Brahim, Valverde, pfff … Rodrygo … pfff. We have competed against the best team in the world, for sure.”
If there was the hint of the discourse of the loser there, a justification for failure, there was also a doubt: was it really so defensive? And had they done it differently, had they opened more, had they taken more risks, would they really have achieved more? Mbappé only got to run once, and it led to the penalty that Vinícius missed. And if they could be accused of not attacking, of leaving their fate in the hands of a shootout, what of their opponents? If Atlético didn’t look for the second goal, could Real have been said to have looked for it more?
“Our priority was not to complicate the game any more. We didn’t want to complicate the game, lose the ball, we didn’t force the play as much. It seems like we had to score but we were never out of this tie; in the worst case scenario, it was level,” Ancelotti said. “Atlético leave this competition with their heads held high.”
On this, Simeone agreed, but they were leaving the competition again, defeated. There was an inevitability about it all, barely believable yet oh so believable. For all the pride, for all that Atlético will be try again despite probably feeling like giving in and never coming back, here was another loss, each more painful than the last. In Europe, Real remain invincible. “Tell me how it feels,” sang Real’s fans, to the tune of Bad Moon Rising. Bloody awful, and also very familiar. And on Sunday they face Barcelona in a match that might define La Liga too: their players, Simeone admitted, would have been delighted watching this go the distance and, yes, they will be tired, yes, they will be hurt, but they will compete.
But that is a different day. And now it was late and it was over. “There are two ways of going to bed,” Simeone said. “Going thinking: bloody hell, how badly we played. We didn’t do the things we had to do, the effort wasn’t there, we didn’t compete. And there is another which is going to sleep [thinking]: ‘Man, I gave everything. I gave everything. I gave everything.’ They gave it all and they deserved the applause.” And then they woke up and realised that the recurring nightmare is Real and will be with them for ever.
