Once more into the fray? Saturday night will be the 39th time manager Diego Simeone has led Atletico Madrid into a derby against Real Madrid — the 40th if you include the day they scored seven in a friendly in New York, which Atleticos do, not least because when it comes to these two, there’s no such thing as a friendly.
It could also be the last and final step. Exactly a month ago at the Santiago Bernabeu, when Simeone’s team was defeated and eliminated from the Copa del Rey, Atletico’s season effectively ended early. Afterwards he said he would get to June, then sit down with the club and see “what suits everyone.”
This may yet not be goodbye, but it feels as close as it gets. Closer than it has got in the past decade at least, the idea of Simeone’s departure publicly entertained and embraced. Doubts over his future, debates about the direction he and the club have taken, surface from time to time. The end has been declared nigh before only to not arrive; reports have even claimed it was done and he was gone. Written off, he won a league title, his second. When he came, winning one was unthinkable. But looking back on these 11 — eleven! — years, there is probably only one moment when it seemed as plausible that the next season would begin without him, and that was different.
That moment was in Milan. Atletico had just lost the 2016 Champions League final to Real Madrid, falling on penalties. Simeone had been coach for 4½ years: since taking over a club in crisis, Atletico had won the Europa League, the Copa del Rey, LaLiga and the Spanish Super Cup. They had reached two Champions League finals. They had been wildly, inexplicably successful. This is a club that had won just one trophy in the 16 years before he arrived.
Defeat, though, cut deep. Simeone was broken, empty. He said he didn’t know what to do, that he had to reflect. He went away with his wife, leaving silence and terror behind. The idea that he might give up was a dreadful one; eventually, he decided he would. “I felt I didn’t have the strength to keep leading the team,” he would later admit. At the time, he said that he’d needed a period of “mourning” first. In that time, people pleaded with him to stay, fearing the whole thing would collapse if he left. The club’s sporting director and CEO flew to Buenos Aires to convince him to stay.
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It’s hard to avoid the feeling that they wouldn’t do that now; instead, if he chose to walk away, they would be pleased. They would never say so, of course — certainly not publicly — but it would save them having to take a difficult decision and, just as importantly, take ownership of it. No one wants to be the one to end it, even if they think ending it might be the best thing to do; it’s an inertia born of the status he earned. Him leaving didn’t bear thinking about then; now, it does. Now they can’t help it. Even those who are his defenders, who emotionally would hold him forever, have moments when they wonder.
Might things be better? Might they play differently? Might going now before it’s too late avoid a more awkward ending, leading to a breakup rather than a farewell? Might waiting just divide them all even more, the fall becoming faster and further and more painful? Has the club outgrown the man that made them grow in the first place? Has he created conditions that have changed everything, a victim of his own success? They have evolved; has he? Might someone else fit better now? Could it, in short, be time?
It has been a long time. Simeone has been coach since January 2012. Managers just don’t last that long; they never really did, and they certainly don’t anymore. He has been in charge of 611 games. He’s been in charge for more than a decade; in the decade before he took over, 11 men had held the job. This weekend, he faces his eighth Real Madrid manager: Jose Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti, Rafa Benitez, Zinedine Zidane, Julen Lopetegui, Santi Solari, Zidane again, Ancelotti again.
Ancelotti had faced him 13 times in just two years the first time round, including the first-ever European Cup final between two teams from the same city, with some 70,000 fans on the road to Lisbon. No other game was played more. When he returned after spells in charge of Bayern Munich, Napoli and Everton, Simeone was still there waiting for him.
“What Simeone has done at Atletico — build something important, put the club among the best in Europe, fighting every year, winning titles, and still doing so in an impeccable manner — is something that all coaches want,” Ancelotti said. “To be at a club a long time, leave your mark, your signature on it: that is the dream of all coaches.”
He had left his mark on them too, sometimes literally. The derby had been revived, if never entirely mastered. It is hard to do justice to quite where Atletico were back then, even if there are glimpses of it from time to time, even if success might even have made failure even crueller.
It may seem strange to measure Simeone’s longevity by Real Madrid, but much of what his club are, or were, was measured by Real Madrid. Atletico Madrid were a team defined in part by who they weren’t: by the team up the other end of the city. They liked to think they were all the things Real weren’t, a narrative they constructed. Which meant real, they claimed: proper fans, making a proper noise. Which meant, well, successful. They on the other hand were el pupas, “the jinxed ones.” It was almost like they embraced defeat, built an identity upon it. It wasn’t just that they did not win titles; it was that they could not win derbies.
This is known now, but it is worth repeating because known is one thing, but truly digested is another, the full scale of their suffering fully grasped. When Simeone took over, the last time Atletico had beaten Real was 1999 — and that year, they had been relegated. Since they had returned to the top flight, they had not won a single game against their rivals.
They weren’t rivals, in fact, not in any meaningful way. Each time Atletico thought they were close, each time they thought they had a chance, they would blow it in some increasingly tragicomic way. Or else, they would be just so awful that you wondered why they bothered showing up at all. There was not the slightest chance of them winning.
Until one night, they did. The run finally ended with Simeone after 14 years and 25 games.
In a Copa del Rey final.
In extra time.
At the Santiago Bernabeu.
Even though they had already won a Europa League, this was it. This was the one, at least in part because of the opponents, because of breaking that spell. There could be no better way of announcing an arrival, of showing how real this was, a new era opening. How big they were becoming. What Simeone had done, how completely he had revolutionised the club. And he had, too: it’s hard to think of a coach who had an impact anywhere quite like he did. He, too, embraced that identity and played on it: rebels fighting the power, only he had a team that won, too. His way: tooth and bloody nail.
A league title followed — perhaps the most merit-worthy in Spanish football history, not at the time as far off the Leicester City case as it may seem since — and a second Europa League. Two European Cup finals. They won another league title: a whole new team built for it, a colossal achievement.
And there were derbies to remember. One image lingers of fans lined up by the scoreboard at the Vicente Calderon taking pictures of it after Atletico had beaten Real Madrid 4-0. That was part of a seven-game run in which they didn’t lose to their city rivals. There was a European Super Cup win against them too, and a Copa del Rey success when even Fernando Torres, the greatest victim of those dark days, a kid who talked about going to school in his Atletico tracksuit every Monday morning annoyed and then lived it as a player too, came back and finally scored against and defeated his rivals.
But when it came to Europe, somehow the breakthrough never came, like this was something else, a reminder of the old order never to be overthrown. Even if they now believed that it could be, even if they had seen that they could compete and win. And, of course, it was the hope that killed them. It is curious to reflect on how it feels like those two lost European finals to Real weigh more heavily than the leagues won. The manner of it is part of the explanation: leading 1-0 until an equalising goal after 92 minutes and 38 seconds before losing in extra time in 2014, followed by penalties in 2016, had denied them. Two European Cups denied in a total of, what, 70 seconds?
(Three, in fact: a last-minute goal had cost them in 1974, which is where the pupas name began.)
That doesn’t get exorcised easily. Nothing ever makes up for it, not when it comes against them. Not when revenge and redemption were repeatedly denied, that crushing inevitability always there. Four years in a row, Real knocked Atletico out of Europe; two finals, a semifinal, a quarterfinal.
It hurt Atletico that they had been complicit in Real’s rise, ending up aiding their rivals, removing Barcelona and Bayern from their path. The very last European night at the Calderon ended with a storm, Atletico supporters singing in the rain, knowing it was over, holding onto the fight, the loyalty, the loss, like they used to. They had actually won, but they had been eliminated; Real would be European champions again. Somehow that summed them up.
After that defeat in Milan in 2016, Simeone didn’t leave despite the pain, the deep sense of loss, the need to mourn, but something shifted. Or maybe ended. Even though he had many, many years to go, and huge titles to win.
Juanfran, who missed the decisive penalty, hitting the post, promised to be back in the final. But while they won a league, they wouldn’t be back. The Champions League moment passed. Real had reasserted themselves. Atletico have played 18 derbies since then. They have competed, but they have won just three: a European Super Cup final, the 2-1 at the Calderon when they were knocked out anyway, and an empty-feeling 1-0 in the league last year that didn’t really mean anything as Real were already champions.
Now, for what might be the last time under Simeone, they meet again. The status quo seemingly reestablished, the league title race beyond them and nothing but the top four at stake, there may be not that much left to fight for except a worthy farewell to the fixture he revived. It can feel a little like the moment has gone, the rebellion run its course, like everything is back to how it was, those days too easily allowed to slip into the distance. Real have won seven of the last 10, losing just once.
The last time they met, in the Copa del Rey a month ago, it went to extra time, just as the past six one-off games between these teams have. There, having dominated, led, missed chances and felt robbed, Atletico fell, just like old times, as if nothing had changed. But, oh, it had. And if Simeone does bow out here with his 40th derby, that should never be forgotten.