Inside Atletico Madrid’s ‘inferiority complex’ hanging over Real Madrid tie | OneFootball

Diego Simeone is admired by players for his motivational skills above anything else, but it’s hard to know what he can say to Atletico Madrid before they step out onto the Metropolitano pitch. You’d forgive him for thinking about a moment from the same fixture when he couldn’t say anything at all.

That was the minutes after Atletico’s first meeting with Real Madrid in the modern Champions League, which was of course the 2014 final in Lisbon. There was only silence from the coach. The actions had said enough, about both clubs. Of course, when it came right down to it, mere seconds from Atleti’s first ever Champions League trophy, Real Madrid scored a 93rd-minute equaliser. It had to be like that, the richer neighbour always going one better. Madrid won 4-1 in extra-time. “It was a lovely thing we had in our grasp,” Simeone eventually said in the post-game press conference.

A few years later, after yet another big Atleti defeat to Madrid - that is how the two clubs are known in the city - Simeone attempted to use such a result in the way he generally does. That was to look forward, and assess what they had been missing, in order to finally make up that gap.

Atleti are evidently still looking, at least in the Champions League.

If Simeone’s side do not win tonight, it will be five consecutive eliminations to their great rivals in this grandest of club competitions. The fact this is the last-16 will also mean it’s every stage of the knock-outs, to go with the 2014-15 quarter-finals, the 2016-17 semi-finals and the finals of 2014 and 2016. It’s even worse if you include Madrid’s victory in the 1958-59 semi-finals, symbolising how history was to be set right at the start.

There is nothing comparable to it in 70 years of the Champions League, and very little in football, especially for two clubs so relatively close in terms of quality. It is inferiority complex taken to an extreme.

open image in gallery

Emotions are always high when Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid meet (Getty Images)

The record isn’t even just about the results, after all. Atleti are the club to have been in the most finals, at three, without ever winning it. They are the competition’s greatest losers, but have the misfortune of sharing a city with its greatest winners. The team who always find a way to win in the Champions League lord it over the team who always find a way to fail.

This is what Atleti have to overcome, as they seek to overturn a 2-1 deficit. It isn’t even Real Madrid. It’s themselves, or rather their own complex about Real Madrid.

When Atleti lost their last Champions League tie to their neighbours, in the 2016-17 semi-finals, the quip from one figure close to the club was that the elimination couldn’t be explained by football. “Only by a psychoanalyst.”

The dynamic is all the worse given Atleti have largely overcome this in domestic football. Both clubs have won three derbies each over the past four seasons, with the game usually ending in a draw. There is a sense of parity.

The turning point there was the 2012-13 Copa del Rey final. Atleti hadn’t beaten Madrid in 14 years, and it is striking how the discussion about the feeling before that game perfectly describes what is happening now.

open image in gallery

(Getty Images)

“It’s hard to articulate what stage fright is, but it’s there,” the Atleti manager says in the brilliant documentary ‘Simeone: Living Match by Match’, which offers so many insights.

Koke describes a feeling of “carrying a backpack full of rocks, and when you play it gets heavier.”

Sergio Ramos talks about how Madrid felt they were winning those games before they even started, because Atleti seemed to feel the same about losing. “They almost assumed history wasn’t with them. Real Madrid always won and I think, in the end, they went in almost accepting defeat.”

In words that now take on an almost tragic tone given what has happened in the Champions League, Simeone said he just wanted to play a final against Madrid “because it’ll be the best place and time to beat them”. Atleti duly won that match as Jose Mourinho’s Madrid era finally fell apart. That it happened at the Bernabeu was all the more symbolic.

Club legend Enrique Cerezo described it as “liberation”… except it was only liberation to suffer the same pain even more exquisitely at a more exalted level. Players like Ramos would remember Atleti players “planting the flag” in their stadium.

A year later, the two clubs met again in the Champions League final, with Atleti as newly-crowned Spanish champions. Madrid of course went one better.

It was genuinely as if all the same issues and fixations needed to be exorcised at that higher level, too. They instead got much worse. You can hear the sense of fatalism as Simeone talks about his thought process as Ramos rose for that 93rd-minute header.

“When I saw him in the air, I knew the ball was in the net.”

open image in gallery

Ramos scored the last-gasp equaliser before Real Madrid won in extra time (Getty Images)

Oscar Ortega, Atleti’s fitness coach, talked of how he “wanted to die”. Chief executive Miguel Angel Gil Marin described the manner of defeat as “cruel”.

You can sense the trauma. Ramos himself spoke of how he felt it was a “psychological blow for them”, as if he could see Atletico thinking that if they didn’t win it then, with only seconds left, they never would.

Simeone himself said “the pain of that defeat will always be in our path”. Those are unusually strong words, but the effect has persisted.

When they met again in the final two years later - at the San Siro stadium where Simeone’s own playing history there lent a sense of destiny - Ramos recalls looking at Atleti before the penalty shoot-out. “You could see doubt.”

Juanfran, a club icon, missed the decisive penalty and cried afterwards about “f**king up the fans’ lives”. They instead rallied around him, almost taking a unique pride in another defeat.

Simeone himself felt at his lowest then, openly wondering “how do you start again?”

“The truth is I was f**ked… the second consecutive Champions League final lost.”

open image in gallery

Defeat in 2016 came on penalties, with Atletico losing two more ties over two legs since (Getty Images)

Atleti still feel this, with figures close to the club saying those two showpieces did “untold damage”. They now see a team that is “nervous” when they play Madrid in Europe, like they can fear what’s coming.

Worse, this is a case where their greatest strength is a core weakness. Simeone has revitalised the club and repeatedly replenished it, but he is more connected to those finals than anyone else. The memory is his. Some executives even believe it is an area where Atleti’s self-identification as grimy outsiders has held them back, deepening the mindset before these matches.

There’s only one potential exorcism with Simeone there. That is victory. And yet, in a self-perpetuating cycle, every defeat makes it more difficult to attain.

So, amid all that, what does he say to his players? This is a match that is much more important to the club than just making the quarter-finals, or even just beating their rivals. It is about their very identity.

Simeone certainly can’t say any of that, though. That would only worsen the anxiety. His final pre-match press conference comment was probably telling.