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Graham Hunter
Multiple Authors
Here’s my elevator pitch: We’re about to witness a three-games-in-10-days endurance series between two elite clubs whose past eight head-to-heads have produced 32 goals (an average of four per match!), each of their past five knockout meetings have been dramatically decided by just a single goal, where one of the clubs is already in a cup final and where one of these two is guaranteed to feature in this season’s UEFA Champions League semifinal.
Throw in the mad fact that who punches their way out of this titanic trilogy might be influenced by the NFL’s Miami Dolphins; that in those previous eight meetings, there have been three red cards, a missed penalty, one converted, a crazy goalkeeping own-goal then, anticipation already tingling, you’d circle the calendar dates, pick up plenty of beer and snacks, then tune in eagerly. Right?
(If your answer was either “no” or “not sure,” please seek immediate help, up your daily dose of Vitamin C and get much more sunlight.)
Sunday kickstarts the head-on hat trick, and it’s a series that can potentially ruin, or make, Barcelona’s season. That’s because Sunday’s hosts, Atlético Madrid, have ever-so-slightly less at stake given that we begin with a LaLiga match that Atléti can actually afford to lose — and many of their fans will actively want them to.
Before filling in the details of the remaining two thirds of the three-peat (April 8 and 14, by the way), it’s best to explain.
Atléti host Spanish champions Barça with the title a more distant phenomenon than Halley’s Comet for Los Colchoneros. But if they beat Hansi Flick’s injury-hit, tiring league leaders, it will hand Atléti’s hated rivals, Real Madrid, an opportunity to move to within a single point of the Catalans. Given that Los Blancos are on the charge and have the scent of Blaugrana debility in their flared nostrils, that’s a heady brew for Madridistas — and Colchoneros! Atléti have no love for Barcelona, but they remain sick to the back teeth of being subjugated by Madrid. Sick of watching them rack up the trophies, greedily consume the bragging rights, and then gleefully use them.
But Atléti’s saturnine and over-excitable coach, Diego Simeone, can’t afford to think like his club’s hardline fans who, I’m willing to bet, would gladly swap defeat at the Metropolitano on Sunday in the league for aggregate victory in the following two matches: the Champions League quarterfinal ties that will dictate who goes on to face Arsenal (in all likelihood) in the semis.
Within that sequence of 32 goals in the past eight meetings nestles this season’s collisions: Barcelona winning 3-1 and 3-0 at home, Atléti winning 4-0 in Madrid. That’s right: because of the Copa del Rey semifinals and the Champions League, these gnarly old rivals will play a total of six times this season.
Spanish football hasn’t seen anything like this logjam of mano-a-mano combat between the same two teams with so much at stake for 15 years.
That was the infamous Clásico Wars’of 2011, when Jose Mourinho’s Madrid and Pep Guardiola’s Barça kicked, snarled and entertained their way through a 1-1 Liga draw, a 1-0 Madrid Copa del Rey final win and Barça’s 3-1 aggregate Champions League semifinal win, where the four all-or-nothing grudge matches were staged across 18 days.
It was toxic, terrific, titanic and tremendous fun — for the viewer. There’s a scintilla less at stake right now; these are monstrously important and pressurized fixtures, but they ain’t Clásicos, it’s not a Copa final or Champions League semifinal.
But, dipping back into what can emanate from such suffocating, closely packed intensity, Iker Casillas, Madrid’s goalkeeper during that explosive sequence admitted, retrospectively: “We weren’t prepared for those four matches in such a short period of time. We all had so much at stake. Those four games marked Spanish football and everything around us. It even took on a political dimension. If Barcelona had won, it was as if Catalonia had taken precedence over Madrid.”
What’s on the line this time has weight, though.
As mentioned, victory for Barcelona on Sunday would be a blow to Real Madrid’s solar plexus — Álvaro Arbeloa & Co. have every right to imagine that Barcelona might drop points to Atléti. If the reigning champions produce a champion’s performance, there will be eight games left (including one Camp Nou Clásico) with Flick’s team possessing at least a four-point lead (Madrid play vulnerable-looking Mallorca earlier on Sunday).
The Champions League first leg at Camp Nou next Wednesday, and then the decider back at the Metropolitano the following Tuesday, is a different kettle of fish.
Last season proved that the financial impact of only reaching the last eight, not the last four, can be as much as €32 million (Barcelona earned €116 million, Aston Villa €83 million). That’s not peanuts, it’s the cost of signing a decent fullback or a superstar’s annual salary. More, whichever of Atléti or Barcelona emerges in just over a fortnight’s time might be facing the prospect of a dream/nightmare final against Real Madrid in Budapest.
Whether Madrid can beat Bayern Munich and then, probably, Paris Saint-Germain in the semifinal is a whole different matter, but the subject carries what the Spanish call “morbo.” It means a special, morbid, all-consuming and possibly unhealthy fascination. Deep in Barcelona’s psyche, there’s never before been a Clásico Champions League/European Cup final. For the neutral, too, it’s the most explosive and seductive prospect — however distant.
As far as Atléti vs. Madrid in a Champions League final … what do I have to explain to you, reader? Simeone admits he still can’t hear the Champions League anthem without seeing the ghosts of losing to Madrid in the 2014 and 2016 finals; an added-time Sergio Ramos header saving the first one for Los Blancos in Lisbon, an offside Ramos goal and penalty misses from Antoine Griezmann and Juanfran losing Atléti the second. Imagine the pain.
Frankly, if you’re convinced and you’re lining up your dates to ensure you savor every last succulent morsel of this tasty trilogy, then I’d say your guide is that Atléti start slight favorites.
Barcelona, distinctly the better side man-for-man, will be missing Raphinha, which is a horror story for them. The Spanish champions haven’t kept a clean sheet in 10 Champions League ties this season and, crucially, Pedri’s really been struggling for form. He’s exhausted.
Two of the matches come at Atléti’s Metropolitano stadium, and that’s where the Dolphins add the final bit of piquancy to this football feast. Miami won their regular-season meeting with the Washington Commanders at the Santiago Bernabéu last November, but they trained for the previous three days on Atlético’s Metropolitano pitch, and the effect of all that tonnage stomping up and down the playing surface meant the grass had to be completely relaid.
Spain suffered a particularly cold, wet, grey winter, the pitch didn’t settle particularly well, and two huge matches — beating Barcelona 4-0 in the Copa and eliminating Tottenham Hotspur thanks to a first let 5-2 win — hinged hugely on opponents consistently slipping and collapsing, again and again, as their studs gave way. Do you remember the travails of Antonin Kinsky and Mickey Van de Ven — both handing Atléti goals on a plate because they simply fell over?
Even Atléti’s captain and all-time appearance maker, Koke, complained, saying: “It’s not good. We slip, the surface lifts up … A team like Atlético needs the pitch to be in good condition. We’re expected to play at a high level, and we need a quality pitch to be able to play, a quality grass.”
Will that play a role? Will Atléti ruin Barcelona’s season (they’ve knocked them out of the Champions League in each of their past two meetings) or will someone like Lamine Yamal defy the odds just like Lionel Messi did in those Clásico Wars’of 2011.
You’ve been forewarned. Don’t miss a minute.
