Atletico Madrid can heal old wounds against Real Madrid but face their rivals with everything to lose

This season’s Champions League semi-final can finish the healing process or it can open old wounds again to cause deeper cuts, maybe never to be closed

Atletico have years of wounds to heal when they face their old rivals once again (Getty)

Along with Sergio Ramos so gleefully pointing to the Real Madrid fans, and fullback Juanfran so poignantly pleading forgiveness from the Atletico Madrid supporters, it remains one of the evocative lasting images of the 2016 Champions League final: the rare sight of Diego Simeone, not just defeated but properly dejected. This was not like the 2014 defeat to Real, when he could so assuredly point to the Spanish league title won. It was a much more bitter and symbolic defeat.

“What is clear to me is that nobody remembers the losers,” the Argentine said after his side had been beaten on penalties by their great rivals. “Losing two finals is a failure. We have to get over this and heal our wounds.”

This season’s Champions League semi-final can both show whether that has happened and at last finish the healing process, or it can open all these wounds again to cause deeper cuts, maybe never to be closed. It is why there is almost more at stake at the Bernabeu on Tuesday and Vicente Calderon next Wednesday than a final. There is the soul of a club, its identity.

Simeone’s Real Madrid counterpart Zinedine Zidane said ahead of the first leg on Tuesday that “you can’t live on the past because that’s what it is, in the past”. This fixture’s past, however, probably infuses and influences everything that happens on the pitch more than with any other in Europe. It is impossible not to believe that the very memory of what has happened between them will impose itself on the players’ minds when it comes right down to it: Atletico’s trying to fight off fatalism, Real’s emboldened by the knowledge they always come through.

It is also the ironic tragedy to what has been an undeniably triumphant and identity-transforming spell at the Calderon for Simeone.


 Cristiano Ronaldo was Real's hero in the quarter-finals 
 (Getty)

The Argentine has done an exceptional job of making a previously fragile club one of the hardest to beat in Europe, and banished so many of their neurotic neuroses… only to arguably deepen those neuroses as they suffer them in all the more exquisite ways and on more exalted stages precisely because he has actually excelled.

Consider the history of the Madrid derby in continental ties, that so hangs over this semi-final. Atletico have regularly defeated Real domestically, and forged themselves into one of the sides now always at the business end of the Champions League, only for it all to come tumbling back down to get there. In three meetings over the past three seasons, Simeone’s side have suffered: a decisive late away goal in the 2014-15 quarter-finals, a last-second equaliser to a Real icon in the 2013-14 final and then a penalty shoot-out.

If you were to try to imagine ways to most effectively psychologically torture a side, you couldn’t get much worse, and that is why it drastically, finally needs to get better. That is also by far the most engaging storyline of this game, not least because another Atletico loss would give Real the opportunity to become the first side to retain the modern Champions League. There is truly a richness of drama here.

For all the talk of psychology and emotion, however, there is one much more basic and tangible fact underlining all of this. Real are simply a far richer club, capable of buying many more stars, and who have thereby developed the deepest and strongest squad in Europe. It was telling that Gareth Bale - the scorer of one of the key goals after Ramos in the 2014 final - was absent for the victory over Bayern Munich in this season’s quarter-final, but that it also barely mattered. Real just had so much quality to come in.

There remain many questions over whether they are actually maximising that quality, whether that this is the best they can be, but it is even more telling that barely seems to matter either. Real so rarely convince as a team, but don’t have to, because their overall strength keeps them stable before one of their stars produces. So it was against Bayern, against Napoli before that, and right through this new era of Champions League dominance for the competition’s most successful ever club.

They have undeniably developed a resilience and knowhow for such ties to go with that quality, as even the controversial win over Bayern proved.

The greater frustration for Atletico, though, is that Simeone’s management has generally been so suited to playing sides of superior wealth and quality. It allows him to come up with supreme reactive gameplans, working backwards to work out ways to beat them - and has worked so well against Real domestically.


 Griezmann scored the equaliser in the Madrid derby last month and will be crucial again 
 (Getty)

Their most recent derby in the Spanish league, after all, inverted the recently Champions League history: Atletico claimed a late equaliser to make it 1-1.

But is this part of the problem? Does this domestic effectiveness in the derby actually make it harder for them in Europe? Is there an element of game theory second-guessing to it, where Simeone keeps needing to come up with something different to surprise superior opponents, with that actually becoming harder the more they play?

He says he is “already clear” on who is going to be in his starting XI, as he tries to solve a problem at right-back in the absence of Juanfran, and that would imply he has a clear idea to his plan, too. There is also the possibility, as Zidane himself put forward, that Atletico have been in better form and - for all that history - come into the game in a better frame of mind. They have not had the pressures of a title race and, so secure of a top-four place again, have won eight of their last 10 in the league. There is even the more enticing possibility that Atletico will actually possess the best player on the pitch, given Antoine Griezmann’s growth, and the ongoing reductionism of Cristiano Ronaldo’s game.

Then again, people have thought that about the Portuguese before - and many no doubt thought it during the Bayern tie - only for Ronaldo to end up scoring the decisive goals.

This is going to be another decisive tie, and not just in terms of who gets to the Champions League final. It means much more than even that.