“I love you,” Diego Simeone said, but they only had 14 games to save the season. It was the night before Atlético Madrid faced Barcelona in the Champions League quarter-final first leg in early April and the manager was sitting alongside Antoine Griezmann, unexpectedly opening up in a press conference of all places, emotion and admiration expressed publicly as the end drew near. “A player first, then a friend,” in the coach’s words. Griezmann had recently announced that he was leaving for Orlando City. That was the bad news; the good news was that he would do so at the close of a campaign that could be for ever, that he was still here at all.
The threat had been that Griezmann would go with immediate effect, departing in March before the season was even finished, his American contract already agreed and not easy to change, faced by a reluctance to release him. But how, Atlético’s coach, CEO and teammates insisted, could he leave when the pinnacle of his 10 years at the club unexpectedly still lay ahead? So meetings were held, pressure applied, a solution found that allowed him to stay a little longer and leave a legacy unlike anything else. “The best is still to come,” Griezmann said. “I love you, but if you don’t run, I’m taking you off,” Simeone reminded him. “There are eight league games, one in the cup [final] and, if God wills it, five more Champions League matches.”
In the end there were only four of those, 13 overall. “My idea was clear: to continue because I felt we could do something incredible and we’re just one step from another final, which would be historic,” Griezmann said on Monday. Not just for him, either: the following night was a unique, unexpected opportunity, a shot at something like redemption, returning Atlético to a place they had not been in a decade and did not expect to be this year. A debate was raised: after the 1974, 2014 and 2016 finals had been lost in a combined total fewer than three minutes, creating the cruel legend of El Pupas, the jinxed one, did football owe them? Did it owe him?
The following night, Griezmann and his teammates were unable to take that last step, placing themselves before history, a debt to be repaid. Instead, they were defeated by Arsenal. This was not the way it was written, the storybook ending: Atlético lost the Copa del Rey final to Real Sociedad and although they defeated Barcelona, they didn’t reach Budapest, Griezmann’s last European night in London instead.
In 17 days, it had all been lost. The club’s all-time top scorer, a World Cup winner and possibly the best player they have ever had, he goes with only a Europa League in 2018, a Uefa Super Cup and a Supercopa de España.
Griezmann joined Atlético the summer after they won their first league title under Simeone and rejoined them again the summer after they won their second. He lost a Champions League final in Milan, his penalty hitting the bar, and won’t play another now. Defeat against Arsenal was Atlético’s first semi-final in nine years: only he, Koke, Jan Oblak and their coach remained from the last, the Calderón’s final European night in 2017; soon there could be none.
The questions on Tuesday night were: how soon? And now what? What impact does this have? Griezmann departs aged 35, Koke is 34, Oblak is 33. They are three of the four players with the most games in Atlético’s history. As for Simeone, he has been coach since 2011, taking over in times of crisis; no manager has lasted this long in Spain. On Tuesday night, it was hard not to wonder if the end was near for all of them, hints hanging that their time too might be coming. Hard not to wonder about Julián Alvarez, too, a man who can’t be satisfied by semi-finals.
This season Griezmann and Koke were already supposed to be playing lesser roles, their successors slowly taking over. Álex Baena and Johnny Cardoso had come for that very reason. But then as the season unfolded there was an inescapable truth: along with Alvarez, they are still Atlético’s best players, and so they played on.
Nothing lasts for ever, though. At the Emirates, Griezmann was removed, unable to run any more. Koke was there to the end. After the whistle, Atlético’s captain said that this was a team of “very young people, who will surely be fighting for big and important things in the future, and we’ll be there to help them”, but he also said it was not the time to address his own future. For the first time in a decade, Oblak’s grip on the No 1 spot has not looked firm. When Alvarez was asked about his future after Atlético beat Tottenham, he replied: “What do I know? You never know.” The rumours will not recede.
“It’s normal for Arsenal or Barcelona or PSG to be interested because he’s very good,” Simeone said. To which the fearful response might be: too good for here? Atlético spent €229m on signings this season, Ademola Lookman the latest to arrive, and their coach is the best paid in Spain. The underdog discourse is not so easily digested now.
And yet while the numbers might not make a tiny club of them, look at the net figures, the squads, and the differences remain real. Yes, €229m has been spent, but €145m recouped. Their income is not much more than half of Arsenal’s. Defeat here was an opportunity lost that may not be coming back; it may also have damaged belief in what lies beyond, in the value of staying. Even Griezmann departed for Barcelona, remember. He has been trying to make up for it ever since; this was his last chance, and it hurt.
It hurt his manager too, aware of the significance of this. Fourteen games became 13, insufficient to save their season, to make history and bid Antoine adieu.
Antoine and perhaps others too. Simeone had told reporters “you can’t imagine how good it feels to be back in the best four clubs in Europe” after the quarter-final. Now they, and he, had been beaten again. Simeone is a man with defenders and detractors. The old, sometimes facile accusations are still occasionally levelled at him, even as everyone agrees with his judgment that this is now a team that “attacks better than it defends” in a season in which they have put five past Madrid and four past Barcelona. At the Emirates, Oblak lamented the “fear” that crept into their game.
Some wonder what life would be like without Simeone, thoughts that linger but haven’t always lasted over recent seasons in which Atlético have evolved through phases and identities. Others believe they should have won more. Tuesday’s defeat means that they have lifted just one major trophy – the league in 2021 – of the last 33 available. This year’s league had again escaped them by the spring and last month’s lost Copa del Rey final was their first in 13 years. Ten teams have been there since they last were. None of those, though, were here: Barcelona had been beaten in the quarters and Real Madrid didn’t make it this far, Atlético left as Spain’s last team standing.
Of the club’s seven European Cup semi-finals (in 1959, 1971, 1974, 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2026) Simeone delivered four but couldn’t reach a third final, a victim in part of his own success. “The reality is the club has grown enormously in every respect, it’s a club that has recognition now that it didn’t before,” he said. “But people want to win. A semi-final is not enough.”
Simeone, 56, said he was “proud” and that he went “at peace” in London. They had believed and they had competed, they had been close too, and there is a reality: the previous nine years are the norm, not this. “The team gave absolutely everything it has,” the coach said. “We reached a place no one imagined, against a team with incredible strength and we fought with our weapons.
“At the start of the season, I said we would compete and we competed. Sadly, we didn’t win anything, but we reached places it’s not easy to reach.”
Asked if he had the strength to get up and try again, to get back here once more, he said: “Not right now. Definitely not now. Not today.” But tomorrow is another day.