La Liga Preview: For Real and Atletico, the Ownership of Madrid Is Up for Grabs

So here we are again, ready to do all this once more. With the sort of frequency only Top Gear reruns from Dave's middle-of-the-day programming can match, Atletico Madrid vs. Real Madrid is back, for the 17th time in three years. There's good reason why Marca recently dubbed it "the never-ending derby."

If it's said that familiarity breeds contempt, then these two rivals are ready to go all Clyde Shelton on one another. Seventeen times in little more than three seasons is a hell of a lot: It was five in 2013-14, a staggering eight in 2014-15 and three more last term.

They've met on every front and on the biggest of them all, twice; it's the capital's last Spanish champions against its European champions; domestic slayers facing down continental conquerors.

The battle of Madrid has surely never rumbled on like this, on and on, swaying one way and then the next. The judges have abandoned the points system in mathematical exhaustion, heading for the pub: Whose city in this?

Many, though, would argue the question of the ownership of Madrid is a pointless one, that there is no question. Already from up the back you can hear mocking laughter mixed in with the blurting of the numbers that count: "32 to 10, pal, 11 to none."

It's a reasonable assessment to make, and those numbers carry weight. For large sections in the capital, pondering whether Madrid is up for grabs is a bit like pondering whether the world once needed some more boob from Jesus Gil. Or more profanities. Or more buildings.

That same group would also nod in the direction of the table. Real arrive at Saturday's derby at the Vicente Calderon as league leaders, undefeated in 11 games, two points clear of Barcelona and six clear of Atletico. It's a nice cushion for Zinedine Zidane's men but not so for their rivals. "It's a dangerous derby," Koke told Marca's Miguel Angel Lara.

But working out how these two teams sit where they are is a curious task. Diego Simeone's men have looked sublime at times this season and have added more firepower to the rock-solid foundation. Antoine Griezmann has six goals, Yannick Carrasco and Kevin Gameiro have five, Angel Correa has three and Fernando Torres and Nicolas Gaitan have two apiece. 

No one this season has looked more impressive than Atleti during their mutilation of Granada, when Cholo and Co. essentially pulled the face-mask trick from Mission Impossible as they netted seven. That was one of four occasions in 11 games that Atleti spanked four goals or more past an opponent, after doing it once in 38 last term. Big wins have arrived at Balaidos and Mestalla, too, and Bayern Munich were taken down in the Champions League. 

And yet, there Atleti are, despite all of it, in fifth. "It's a bit crazy," said Koke. "In the first international break there was talk of relegation, in the second we were top, and now there are these doubts floating around."

That talk the midfielder spoke of was Griezmann's angry remark after drawing away to Leganes back in August. "If we continue like this, we'll be fighting relegation," the Frenchman told beIN Sports. Team-mate Saul Niguez snapped back, telling Deportes Cuatro (h/t AS' Javier de Paz): "He should think about what he says."

You don't normally associate this Atleti with internal niggle, but that wasn't a one-off occurrence this season, and you sense there's a touch of tension ahead of the derby. Defensively, the team aren't quite what we've come to expect; they haven't keep a clean sheet in four games, and the switch to a more aggressive style has shown it has a complication or two. 

"Koke is playing in the middle," said Gabi this week. "He's doing it well but perhaps when it comes to defending we're more fragile." According to AS' Aled Bryon, Simeone responded by giving his captain a 20-minute dressing down after training on Tuesday for the comment. 

The Argentinian is an animated figure at the best of times. Picturing him tearing into you is as frightening as those snow leopards going at each other in the BBC's Planet Earth II. Perhaps the always-fair Daily Mail can blame Sir David Attenborough for Simeone's mood, too. 

If Atletico have some concerns, though, they can be sure their opponents have some of their own. Real's start to the season has looked good on paper but not on the eye. After making rapid progress late last season, Zidane's men have regressed from a structural standpoint. The defence has looked permanently shaky, and the midfield without Casemiro has returned to having that one-dimensional feel again. 

The Brazilian is unlikely to be fit for Saturday's trip to the Calderon, and Toni Kroos is out injured, too. Such absences will force the returning Luka Modric into the most heavy lifting since Al Pacino and Roberto De Niro tried to carry the script of Righteous Kill. 

Modric being Modric, though, will probably pull it off anyway. "With Modric, they have recovered their best player," said Gabi this week. "He's the one who makes them play and gives the team balance. We'll try to counter his playmaking skills."

That praise isn't anything new. Atletico players have regularly expressed their admiration for the Croatian in recent seasons. Declaring him Real's best is in part due to him just being brilliant and in part a chance to stick it to Cristiano Ronaldo. 

The Portuguese enters the derby with (for his standards) a modest five goals in eight league appearances. Three of those came in the 4-1 win over Alaves, highlighting his struggles elsewhere, the sensations coming from his game not quite right.

According to Marca's Jose Felix Diaz, Zidane is considering shifting Ronaldo from the wing and into a central role against Atleti. If he does, it'll be out of necessity more than choice. Karim Benzema is struggling for fitness, and Alvaro Morata is out for a month after picking up a hamstring injury in Spain's clash with England on Tuesday.

From Zidane, we might see something more like a 4-4-2 rather than a 4-3-3 as a result, and James Rodriguez might get a chance in the reshuffle. Faustino Asprilla will just have to hope that Ronaldo doesn't teach the Colombian more naughty tricks. 

"James is my friend and I love him a lot," Asprilla, a former Colombia international, told ESPN Deportes (h/t ESPN FC's Dermot Corrigan). "But I can see that his friendship with Cristiano Ronaldo at Real Madrid is damaging him." Observing obsessive professionalism up close must have its drawbacks, eh?

What Ronaldo does need to address however is his scoring record at the Calderon. Real's preening superstar hasn't scored down on the banks of the Manzanares for more than two years, going 349 goalless minutes there in the last two seasons, per AS' Manu Sainz. 

Such a record is in line with that of his team. The men from the Santiago Bernabeu are winless in six trips to the Calderon and haven't scored in four of those. Atleti's shabby but intimidating home has become a torture chamber for them, and both Carlo Ancelotti and Rafa Benitez met the beginning of the end there. You shouldn't go into Simeone's den without a safety briefing, but it's not just there. 

The Argentinian has led Atletico to three straight wins at the Bernabeu, too. No visiting team had ever done that before. You have to go back to Jose Mourinho's final season to find a time when Real last beat their neighbours in the league. Since, the record stands at four wins for Cholo's lot and two draws. 

It's from this that the question of ownership of the capital rises. Perhaps never before have these two metropolitan behemoths been this good and this strong simultaneously. 

Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Images

Browse through history, and more often than not you'll find this rivalry has been a case of one up, one down. In the decade or so after the Spanish Civil War, Atletico won four league titles to Real's none, two of them as Atletico Aviacion when the club merged with the Spanish Air Force. Then the arrival of Alfredo Di Stefano at Real changed things; changed everything. 

Real have won 30 league titles since and 11 European cups. Throughout most of that, Atletico popped up from time to time, most notably in the 1970s when led in the middle by Luis Aragones. But until now, it had never been anything sustained, and yet the rivalry has always endured anyway; major names at Real have cited Atletico and not Barcelona as the club's main rivals. 

"The rivalry with Barcelona?" Di Stefano told Sid Lowe for Fear and Loathing in La Liga. "Barcelona had a good team then: very, very good. But for me the rivalry at the time was with Atletico Madrid."

From the club's most important figure in history, that might sound strange. But one thing is key here: proximity.  

"They [Atletico] were a good team and they were right here next to us. When they won they suddenly sprang up like mushrooms and started shouting. Barcelona? They were six hundred kilometres away—we couldn't even smell them."

Di Stefano wasn't alone. Ferenc Puskas said the same. So did Pirri. "Barcelona mattered of course but for us back then the bigger rival was Atletico Madrid," he told Lowe. 

It's Atletico's feistiness and rough edge that has managed to hold Real's attention. The clash in identities and complicated histories unfolding only a few miles apart have kept this derby seriously heated, if not always competitive.

Between 1999 and 2013, Atleti went 14 years and 25 derbies without a single victory against Real. As explained here at Bleacher Report, Atleti's existence as the "jinxed one" reinforced itself, the whole thing self-perpetuating: 

"

Atleti would just concede and wilt. Between 2003 and 2009, they conceded goals in the first minute (three times), third minute, fifth minute (twice), sixth minute and eighth minute of contests with Real. They also had a knack for blunders, for giving away penalties, for feeble defending, for being the butter rather than the knife and for flirting with victory but finding every possible way to avoid it.

By 2010, a decade had passed without an Atleti win. At the Bernabeu, a huge banner depicting horror characters and a frightened child in an Atletico shirt read: "Every derby night: your worst nightmare." In 2011, another read, "Wanted: a worthy rival for a decent derby."

"

Gabi told Marca's Isaac Suarez this week that "before [Simeone], we didn't know how to beat Real and we didn't know why." How do you explain how hexes take hold? How the ridiculous happens over and over again? How history guides the future for 11 men?

In the wonderful God Is Round, Juan Villoro delves into the spiritual in an attempt to explain. "The matchday 11 and the people in the stands are a minority compared to the ghosts. Every person who has ever played for and shouted on their team is present." 

Through pain and despair, Atleti were forever spiky, aggressive. "We must interpret a bad temper as a sign of inferiority" the Austrian psychotherapist Alfred Adler once said. There's something in that, but look at Atletico now. 

Simeone's men are not so much feisty anymore as just plain good. Really good. It's them and not Real who are the last Spanish champions from the capital; they've reached two Champions League finals in three years, only to meet Real; they've humiliated their neighbours over and over in the league for three years. They've done the same in the Copa del Rey and the Spanish Super Cup, too.

If before Simeone they didn't know how to beat Real and didn't know why, now they do, on both counts. On one side of the divide, they'll scoff that ownership of Madrid is up for debate. Historically it's not, but on the pitch it is. Bring the judges back from the pub, and bring on the Madrid derby.

Follow @TimDCollins