Why Atletico Madrid Can Be the Team to Stop Bayern Munich's Winning Run

In the final season of football at the Vicente Calderon comes an early tribute to one of the stadium’s greatest-ever nights.

Bayern Munich’s visit in the UEFA Champions League on Wednesday evening conjures up memories of just five months ago, when Saul Niguez’s stunning goal earned Atletico a 1-0 semi-final first-leg victory that proved to be crucial come the second clash, which they lost 2-1 to proceed on away goals.

These are the evenings that Atleti supporters will remember when their home ground of almost 50 years closes its doors for the final time at the end of the current campaign, and it is to be hoped that the closing of those doors provides the inspiration to do something special.

And the visit of Bayern could be just the chance to do that.

Still unbeaten this season having won four and drawn three of their competitive matches, Atletico will again approach the game in a familiar manner.

Bayern Munich are, after all, one of the bone fide giants of world football. They’ve won all eight of their games in all competitions this season, scoring 27 times and conceding just once. Indeed, the last competitive game that they lost was that clash in the Calderon at the end of April, which seems like light years ago now.

New manager Carlo Ancelotti arrived in Bavaria in the summer and quickly put that Ancelotti-like stamp on things.

A terrific manager of the super-clubs, the Italian is doing things with minimal fuss, getting performances out of world-class talents such as Robert Lewandowski and Franck Ribery to ensure that he doesn’t need to build a team at the Allianz Arena, as much as shape and mould the one that is already there.

Of course they will run away with the Bundesliga title this season, but after three successive UEFA Champions League semi-final failures under Pep Guardiola, you get the sense that that is the trophy the club want this time around. Everything else is just a given.

And Bayern started in ruthless fashion by swatting aside the Russian group minnows FK Rostov 5-0 in their first match in Group D. Again, though, that was expected. Now comes the real test.

And it comes against an Atletico side who suddenly look in-tune.

Last week’s 1-1 draw at Barcelona was, in many ways, the perfect warm-up for this game for Diego Simeone’s side, who attempted to prepare for this clash by resting players for the weekend win at home to Deportivo La Coruna only for Augusto Fernandez and Jose Gimenez to pick up injuries. Neither would have started this game anyway.

JOSEP LAGO/Getty Images

What is more likely is that the team will bear closer resemblance to the one that drew at Barca, where a stoic, resolute approach in the first half was—by the end—replaced by a more advanced game that largely took place in the Barca half by the second.

Angel Correa equalised, and there were chances for the visitors to win the game late on, and while critics might say that Barcelona didn’t have Lionel Messi for the second half, Bayern Munich won’t have him either.

Simeone will be desperate to stir up the passion and the atmosphere that was created for the night against Bayern five months ago, because that is the type of environment in which both he and his players thrive.

JAVIER SORIANO/Getty Images

The Calderon might be close to closing its doors for the final time, but the old stadium still has one good season left in it, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that that season could be given a kick-start here.

Bayern’s winning run under Ancelotti has been impressive, but after beating Borussia Dortmund in the German Super Cup, their opponents have been Carl Zeiss Jena, Werder Bremen, Schalke, Rostov, Ingolstadt, Hertha Berlin and Hamburg, with the latter only beaten via an 88th-minute goal last Saturday.

With the greatest will in the world, none of those sides are an Atletico Madrid, and the return of a huge European night to the Calderon will be motivation enough for a big performance from Simeone on the touchline. Now he just needs his players to follow suit.

The Argentinian will, of course, view Ancelotti as the man who wrested the UEFA Champions League trophy out of his hands.

Simeone’s Atletico were a matter of seconds away from winning the competition for the first time in Lisbon in 2014 when Ancelotti’s Real Madrid forced an equaliser in stoppage time through Sergio Ramos, before going on to run away with the final in extra-time.

Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Images

That disappointment—which was added to by last season’s final loss to Zinedine Zidane’s Real—has never left Simeone, who, with his contract shortened recently, might feel that time is running out to deliver on a European stage with what has been a fascinating project.

Nothing will be settled on Wednesday in terms of future winners of the competition, of course, with a defeat not fatal for either of them following Matchday 1 victories, but there is the prospect of laying down a marker there.

Atletico—perhaps often overlooked on a continental scale because of the vastness of Barcelona and Real Madrid—have a chance to show just how good they are again in a competition in which the advancement to two finals in three years has been something that others can only dream of.

Indeed, it is Atletico who have the greater Champions League pedigree in recent years, the type of game to disrupt a Bayern side who’ve had it fairly easy so far this season and, of course, the memory of that great night five months ago when the world stood up and took notice of the talents of Saul Niguez.

With pretty much the same teams available to both managers, the presence of Ancelotti in the away dugout is going to be one of the few differences from the night at the start of it, and Atletico will hope that the same is true at the end of the evening as well.

A draw would be fine given how early we are into the group stages, and you might find that both would take that now even if it meant the end of Bayern’s 100 per cent record from the start of the campaign, but Simeone will want more.

He’ll want to lay down a marker and to again prove that Atletico are a huge danger to the established “bigger” clubs both at home and abroad.

There a few places where they enjoy knocking down a few egos more readily than at the Vicente Calderon, a stage that is just waiting for a fitting ending now.

That could all start on Wednesday night.