Atletico Madrid's 10 Greatest Games of the 21st Century: No. 1
With club football taking yet another international break, we’ve taken the opportunity to look back at Atletico Madrid’s rise to prominence during the 21st century through some of the matches that made them what they are today.
We’ve be remembering Atleti’s 10 greatest games since 2000, and we conclude with No. 1.
1. Barcelona 1-1 Atletico Madrid, May 17, 2014, La Liga
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It so rarely comes down to situations such as this.
The entire league season—an entire season’s worth of blood, sweat and tears—was on the line at the Camp Nou in May 2014, and although by the end the home fans were up on their feet and applauding at Barcelona’s famous old ground, it was Atletico Madrid they were applauding.
They were champions, and they were thoroughly deserving victors.
Diego Simeone’s side might not have had the firepower of their rivals—they finished the league season on 77 goals, compared to Barcelona’s 100 and Real Madrid’s 104—but they were a savvy, streetwise side that fully deserved success, their greatest success of the 21st century.
Yet having hit the front with 10 matches of the 2013/14 season remaining, Atletico had stumbled a little.
A win at Valencia, which put them two wins away from the title, was followed by a shock 2-0 defeat at Levante and then a messy 1-1 draw at home to Malaga, in which they fell behind and required a late equaliser from Toby Alderweireld.
Had Adrian Lopez scored a chance in stoppage time, then they would have been champions, but Malaga goalkeeper Willy Caballero pulled off a fine save. Those sort of fine margins can be difficult to get over.
But Barca and Real Madrid had stumbled as well.
Gerardo Martino’s side conceded a stoppage-time equaliser to draw 2-2 at home to Getafe before following that up with a goalless draw at Elche. Carlo Ancelotti’s Real Madrid conceded with five minutes to go at Valladolid to draw 1-1 and followed that up with a 2-0 loss at Celta Vigo. It was looking as though this was a league title nobody wanted to win.
It all meant Atletico needed a point at the Camp Nou on the final day to be champions for the first time in 18 years, so a fascinating challenge awaited.
Barca, driven on by their fans and the desire not to be overshadowed in their own home, took the fight to Atletico from the beginning.
The visitors lost their top scorer, Diego Costa—off injured in the first half—and then their midfield schemer Arda Turan. There began to be a feeling that this wasn’t going to be their day and that a club that had so often fallen short in heartbreaking and increasingly dramatic fashion would do so again.
Then it happened.
Cesc Fabregas and Lionel Messi were involved in the buildup, and when the ball fell to Barca’s Alexis Sanchez, he drove a brilliant, spearing, Exocet of a shot from the tightest of angles. He gave Thibaut Courtois absolutely no chance.
Advantage Barca.
So Atletico were placed in the most difficult of situations, trying to climb back up a hill they had fought so hard to get to the top of in the first place, only for fate and circumstance to place them in the most difficult setting on the final day of the season.
Shorn of their cutting edge in Costa and their creative hub in Turan, they needed to rely on other methods to get back into the game. This was truly an examination of Diego Simeone’s Cholismo—that manner in which he feels and almost wears a game of football, the pervading characteristic that has made the Argentinian one of the most revered managers in the modern game—and he was to pass it with flying colours.
His players clawed their way back into the match.
The perennially nervous backup goalkeeper Jose Pinto was playing for Barcelona, and he was almost encouraging the visitors as he juggled the ball around his penalty area. Adrian Lopez and Raul Garcia both threatened before David Villa—who had left Barca for Atletico the previous summer—agonisingly hit the post.
A breakthrough was coming, though, and it arrived just four minutes in to the second half.
A corner was swung in, and there was the dependable Diego Godin, a man who had given his all for Atletico throughout the gruelling league season, to head home. It was now they who were in the box seat.
There was obviously going to be a Barca fightback.
Messi—a player who must be dreaded even more in situations such as these—came more and more into the game. He put the ball in the net, but it was correctly ruled out for offside. Neymar came off the bench to add to the vast ranks of attacking talent on the pitch.
Atletico had to stay solid as the final moments of the league season were played out with everything on the line.
Courtois made a good save from Dani Alves, and Barca continued to pile on the pressure up until the closing stages, when goalkeeper Pinto even came up for a corner. Then it ended.
Atletico held on. They were champions—something that, in the era of the mega money and mega dominance of Barca and Real Madrid, was a quite remarkable achievement.
Writing in the Guardian, Spanish football writer Sid Lowe hailed Simeone's side, writing:
"What Diego Simeone and his side have achieved is barely believable.
Barcelona's supporters recognised the magnitude of what they had witnessed: when the final whistle went here, they immediately broke into applause.
Simeone's side have taken on the duopoly and defeated it. This is a monumental achievement: not only has it been 10 years since someone else won the title, the nearest anyone has been over the last five years was 24, 39, 25, 28 and 17 points.
Atletico finished this season three points ahead.
"
And they finished it as champions, the crowning glory of what Simeone had sought to put in place ever since he returned to the club in December 2011, when Atletico were at a pretty low ebb. It's perhaps something he will never again achieve given the tough level of competition.
Regardless, this was an achievement to be lauded and celebrated like few others in the club’s history.
And it was Atletico’s finest hour of the 21st century.
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