Why Atletico Madrid Should Be Favourites in All-Madrid Champions League Final

Given everything that has gone before, and the thousands upon thousands of articles that have mentioned Atletico Madrid in the same sentences as Leicester City (here’s one), it is tempting to look upon the former reaching the UEFA Champions League final as another great underdog story.

There they go again, Diego Simeone’s plucky band of brothers defying both the odds to claw their way into the Milan showpiece, where the world expected to see Barcelona or a Bayern Munich line up in their stead.

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But this is an Atletico outfit that has reached two finals in three years, and one that is ruthlessly and relentlessly drilled by Simeone—a manager quite unlike any other working in the game today.

Real Madrid—their opponents on May 28—might have the history, the glamour, the Galactico manager in Zinedine Zidane, the three-time Ballon d’Or winner in Cristiano Ronaldo and the most expensive player in the world in Gareth Bale, but what they don’t have is the measure of their city rivals.

With fixtures against relegated Levante and at home to Celta Vigo to come this season, Atletico are a point better off than Real in the Primera Division table, where they both hunt down leaders Barcelona.

They also emerged unbeaten from their two matches with Los Blancos in 2015/16, extending an impressive recent Madrid derby record that shows just two defeats in their last 12 matches in the fixture.

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The fact one of those losses came in heartbreaking fashion in the Lisbon Champions League final of two years ago should only serve as motivation. Simeone looks a driven, determined man at the best of times, but tack on the hunt for revenge and he becomes positively unstoppable. Would you want this man bearing a grudge against you?

The sleek, fairly cool persona Zidane has portrayed since taking the Real Madrid job in January is in polar opposite to this, and while the Frenchman’s tenure has to be seen as a successful one so far—and he deserves a full season next term—you couldn’t confidently say he is a better manager than Simeone. Few in the world are.

The Argentinian will play on the underdogs tag because that is how he motivates his team, but as Sports Illustrated’s Ben Lyttleton said: there is more to Atletico than that:

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[Simeone] will be the first to say he is the underdog.

The Argentine coach must have watched the second semi-final [between Real Madrid and Manchester City] wondering if it was even the same sport: where was the intensity that we saw in the Bayern-Atletico thriller?

The tentative Man City-Madrid game [in the first leg at the Etihad Stadium] was not how a Simeone team plays. His sides are all about the collective and the sacrifice for your teammates.

City’s players barely looked like they had ever met before.

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And that would seem to be the key difference looking ahead to the final.

Real undoubtedly have the greater individuals, and in Ronaldo they have one of the greatest individuals of all time, but it is Atletico’s greater intensity and team ethic that should give them an advantage.

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If anything, Simeone’s team could almost be accused of being too conservative when the finish line approached as they came so close to continental glory two seasons ago

But as Lyttleton pointed out in the aforementioned article, only five of the team that started that game are likely to begin in Milan: Diego Godin, Juanfran, Filipe Luis, Gabi and Koke.

The rest of the side is sprinkled with youthful talents such as Jan Oblak, Jose Gimenez, Saul Niguez and Antoine Griezmann, who will run and fight and scrap for every ball. Add to that the renaissance of Fernando Torres—seemingly revved up by those around him—and you’ve got a special team.

Indeed, the thought of Torres scoring the winner at the San Siro—the setting where his seemingly terminally declining career reached a nadir in 2014—would probably be Simeone’s only nod to the individual over the collective.

The rest is all about the team and about putting right what went wrong two years ago.

Atletico should be the favourites for this final—even if they don’t want to be.