We’re exactly halfway through April, at the pointy end of the season, and Madrid’s “other” football team, Atletico, are still alive and kicking on two fronts. How are they keeping this up?
With apologies to Liverpool, they really are the story of this season.
Here’s an update for those who don’t closely follow the Spanish game. Atletico Madrid moved three points clear of rivals Real Madrid atop the La Liga table (and four clear of Barcelona) with a 2-0 win at Getafe on Sunday. They are the third horse who’ve managed, against all odds and expectations, to keep pace with the leaders in a perennially two-horse race.
With five matches left to play (including a trip to Barcelona), destiny is now in Atletico’s hands.
With huge global fan-bases and a favourable TV arrangement, the shadow cast by the “big two” (Barcelona and Real) in Spain has grown increasingly longer over the rest. They’ve duopolised every championship since 2004. In recent years, the final gap between second and third position has been as great as thirty points. Roughly, the support of two-thirds of Spanish fans is concentrated on those two giants.
Last summer, Real broke the all-time world transfer record as they spent £85 million to prise Gareth Bale from Tottenham. The Guardian‘s Spanish football expert Sid Lowe recently wrote: “Atlético’s annual budget is €120m, compared with €580m up the road at the Bernabéu. They are not poor exactly, but their most expensive player is the €12m Filipe Luís, signed four years ago, before belts were properly tightened. This is not really a team of stars.”
But wait, there’s more. Atletico leading the league in April is only half the story. Simultaneously, their small squad have reached the Champions League semi-final – the first time an Atletico side have done so in forty years.
The last four, a stage that much more expensively-assembled teams (including Manchester City, Manchester United, Paris St Germain, Juventus, and so on) have failed to get to.
They’ve done so with a group of men who regularly back-up with only a four-day break. Without the luxary of wholesale rotation, Atletico have played fifty-four matches and lost just five.
After knocking out Italian giants AC Milan in the round of 16, Atletico were drawn to play Barcelona in the quarter-finals. Formidable Barcelona. A team packed with World Cup winners and a fellow called Lionel Messi up front. Barcelona: veterans of six Champions League semi-finals in a row. Winners of the tournament in 2006, 2009 and 2011.
Undaunted, Atletico set about the task with ferocity. Courtesy of a Diego Costa wonder strike, they took the lead in the Nou Camp and eventually claimed a favourable 1-1 result.
Roared on by a packed Estadio Vicente Calderon in the return leg, Atletico’s eleven sprang from the blocks like frenzied greyhounds. They charged around the pitch, denying their opponents time on the ball. Barcelona’s defence was a shambles as Atletico found space in behind time and again, with pace, precision and power. They took the lead after six minutes and hit the woodwork a further three times early on.
Their famous opponents were stunned. Barca returned fire, as champion teams do, but the organised banks of Atletico resistance held out, just, to pull off an improbable 2-1 aggregate victory.
And the improbable is what they’ve been doing all season. But how?
For starters, heavy praise should be heaped on the manager, a passionate 43-year-old by the name of Diego Simeone. A distinguished player who won over 100 caps for Argentina, Simeone took over the Atletico job in the closing days of 2011. He’s since won the Europa League, Copa del Rey and UEFA Super Cup.
Simeone was known as a feisty player on the field and that tenacity has been well and truly transferred to his charges in Madrid. Atletico’s success has been built on unyielding commitment, workrate, organisation and togetherness.
Then there is the remarkable story, and the goals, of Diego Costa. Sid Lowe writes: “Five times he had been loaned out, to Braga, Celta, Albacete, Valladolid and Rayo Vallecano. His best scoring total was 10 but he has been La Liga’s outstanding player this season, scorer of 25 league goals, seven in five in the Champions League, fought over by two international teams: Spain and Brazil, World Cup hosts and holders.”
There’s also Thibaut Courtois, aged just 21, who has been solid, if not inspiring, in goals. There’s the excellent Diego Godin who plays just in front of him, at centre back. There’s Koke, just months older than Courtois, starring in midfield. There’s the hard working and skilful David Villa, deemed dispensable by Barcelona and released for a pittance. Together, they’ve formed a team so much stronger than the sum of their parts.
As Simeone put it: “We can envy other teams’ economic power but when it comes to competing we don’t envy anyone anywhere.”
Another factor has been the backing Atletico receive at their home ground, the Calderon. Fans being a team’s “twelfth man” is an overused cliché in football, but if ever there was a case of it being true, this is it.
Coach Simeone has occasionally been seen on the sidelines waving his arms around like a conductor, urging the 55,000 inside to sing louder and louder. In truth, the red-and-white hordes raise the proverbial roof regardless. See it for yourself on television when Chelsea come to town next Wednesday morning.
For as long as I can remember, Atletico have been a cursed, slapstick club. An unstable organisation whose lot, it seemed, was to naturally dither in the shadow of their celebrated neighbours (they went 22 matches without beating Real until this season). A club that have endured relegation and 46 changes of coach (including interims) since 1986.
Just 180 minutes away from a Champions League final and with the outright lead in the title race, their time in the sun is now. Captain Gabi has already described these as the best days of their lives.
Inevitably, Atletico’s small squad will be broken up by more moneyed rivals in Spain and abroad. Surely, this tale of underdog over-achievement can’t last.
But beginning Friday night, there are seven or eight games left this season for Atletico to make history. Football purists, enjoy this team while you can.
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