After Real Madrid Defeat, Are Atletico Madrid's La Liga Hopes Already Over?

Madrid is a vibrant, bustling city. There really isn't much that stays still for long.

Climb up from the Metro and onto the Puerta Del Sol, and you'll see a largely youthful mixture of locals and tourists, always planning their next moves, their next destinations, their next thrills. Always forward, never backward.

You really can't afford to stand still for long because everything will pass you by. You'll miss the best party or the most exciting place to be.

But standing still is exactly what Atletico Madrid are doing right now.

Already very much an afterthought in their own city—a city dominated by one of the world's biggest sporting institutions—Atletico have made a fantastic effort at overhauling Real Madrid in the past few years, of being the team that everyone wants to talk about in Madrid, of being the exciting place that everyone wants to go.

All of this went on while all of the sports shops in Madrid showcased Real shirts in the windows, not Atletico ones. Official Real stores seem to lurk on almost every corner, with tourists queuing up to be a part of the Real experience.

But Atletico have always been more "real"—with a small r—than that, which is what has drawn people to them over the years.

More recently, under Diego Simeone, they have come to represent everything that Real and Barcelona aren't—simultaneously becoming a huge pain in the neck for La Liga's established "big two" teams. They've gloried in that and have taken that form on to the continental stage, where they've reached two of the last three Champions League finals. We won't mention who they lost to each time.

But after Saturday night's very un-Atletico-like 3-0 defeat at home to Real in the last league Madrid derby at the Vicente Calderon—a third defeat in four La Liga matches—there is a real worry about what comes next for the club.

They are nine points adrift of their city rivals, which already looks to be too big a gap to make up.

Sure, it's not impossible.

Real have shown weakness on occasion this season, and this certainly seems to be a far-from-vintage year for Barcelona. But there is nothing that Simeone's side are doing right now that indicates they can haul themselves back into the title race.

After a slow start of two successive draws against Alaves and Leganes—two teams newly promoted to La Liga—they rallied and went on a fine winning run, at one stage remaining unbeaten for nine matches in all competitions, winning eight and only drawing at Barcelona.

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They could reach those heights again—it is certainly not beyond the realms of possibility—but given the atmosphere around the club and some of the incidents that went on during the derby defeat, that seems a long way off right now.

The news earlier in the season that Simeone had taken the unusual decision to shorten his contract with the club, meaning his departure is now expected to be in the summer of 2018 at the latest, was quite rightly held up as a rare example of honesty in modern football.

There is a real sense that the Argentinean has decided to move on from a club he's been at for five years simply because he wants a new experience, much like he did when he was a player for the club and left for Inter Milan in the summer of 1997.

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So does he have the hunger to put right what is currently going wrong?

Earlier this season, Simeone quite rightly received praise—and often on these pages—for his shift to a more attacking setup in recent years, but in Spain there's the suggestion that his lack of understanding on how to play in such a way is now costing him.

Could it be that a switch back to the old Atletico way of doing things is what is now needed—temporarily at least—if they are to become regulars in the top four and even challenge for the title?

If Simeone is to do that, he'll need to shift around some personnel and make one or two big calls in both a positional and personal sense. In Marca, Euan McTear wrote:

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This year's emergence of [Yannick Ferreira] Carrasco has now required Simeone to sign off on another creative license, given that the Belgian's talents are not properly extracted if he is asked to play in the same conservative manner as Koke, his predecessor on the left wing.

The cost of letting Carrasco join Antoine Griezmann and the centre-forward - either Kevin Gameiro or Fernando Torres - in attack is a weakness on the left flank, one which even a world-class left-back like Filipe Luis cannot be expected to cover and one which Real Madrid exploited on Saturday.

At the same time, the similarly-undroppable Koke has had to be wedged into the XI alongside Gabi in the centre of midfield, taking over from Augusto Fernandez and Tiago, who timeshared the role last season, but who have suffered injuries this year.

Now that Tiago is back, however, logic would suggest that the Portuguese defensive midfielder should occupy that spot as Gabi's sidekick, causing Simeone a major headache.

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Yet, does Simeone want to do this again?

On paper, his team are nine points behind the leaders with 26 matches to go, and so of course it is still possible for them to win the league. But is it likely? Not at all.

Real Madrid's total of 30 points from 12 matches is exactly the same number that eventual champions Barcelona had at this stage last season.

Real had 24 points from 12 games back then, and Atletico had 26 from 12. The pair were never able to claw back those respective six- and four-point advantages that they had given their rivals. Barca eventually won the title from second-place Real by a point, which was largely down to some unusual results that let them back into the race when it looked like it had been run.

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That could still happen, of course, but at nine points behind, with problems over their tactics and with question marks over their manager's motivation, Atletico certainly don't look as though they are ready to usurp their neighbours and climb back to the top of the tree both in their city and in their country.

You can never say that it is truly over (otherwise, what is the point of even competing?), but it already looks as though any glory Atletico find this season is going to have to come in the cup competitions, with another crack at the Champions League surely welcomed by their fans.

They've stood still for too long in the league, and Real have gone so far past them as to now look out of sight.

As always happens in lively Madrid, if you snooze, you lose.