THERE is little to like about how Atlético Madrid play soccer, but much to admire.
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The possession-based gameplan that took Barcelona and Spain to world dominance and is now being preached throughout the Australian system simply doesn’t cut the mustard at the Vicente Calderón _ the lesser known stadium in the Spanish capital.
This season, Burnley have won promotion to the Premier League, Leicester have won the Premier League and Atlético went all the way to a Champions League final penalty shootout with a strategy that happily cedes majority possession to their opponents.
In each of their last four matches in the Champions League, Atlético had half the possession of their opponents and yet had beaten Barcelona and Bayern Munich.
The policy is based not on how long you have the ball but what you do with it. Defend staunchly, steal possession, put Andre Gray, Jamie Vardy or Antoine Griezmann on their bike, win the game.
The gameplan has been best described as a sponge: absorbing everything poured on you before channeling it back at the pourer.
If Atlético were to win their first European Cup they would also have to beat cross-city rivals Real, thereby accumulating the scalps of arguably the best three club sides in the world in consecutive games.
The semi-final between Bayern and Atlético was a classic beauty and the beast. Pep Guardiola was overseeing the beautiful style he pioneered at Barca against the team embodiment of Diego Simeone: niggling, negating and nullifying in exactly the same way as a coach forever remembered for instigating David Beckham’s sending off at the 1998 World Cup.
The Argentinian hardman delights in playing the bad guy. He even wears all black at every match like the baddie in westerns.
With his adversary in the final being the bald Zinedine Zidane, symbolic of all things good in his playing days (well, apart from the regrettable World Cup final head butt thing), it was difficult not to take the analogy one step further with the Frenchman filling the Yul Brynner role from The Magnificent Seven.
A stadium home to one of world sport’s greatest city rivalries, Milan’s San Siro played host to another as the Madrid teams met in Europe’s club showpiece for the second time in three years.
The teams were Spanish, the venue Italian, the officials English and the support roles French, German, Portuguese, Croatian, Slovenian, Belgian and even Welsh.
The European affair had a sprinkling of South America courtesy of Simeone, Marcelo, Casemiro, Danilo, Augusto Fernandez, Felipe Luis and Diego Godin.
Fortunately, Australian television viewers had the SBS commentary team of Tony Jones and David Pleat to tell us there was a sense of occasion to the occasion.
Pleat has an uncanny knack of dumbing down the complicated foreign stuff for fellow Anglophiles.
In Pleat-speak, Atlético becomes Athletic, Felipe Luis becomes Philip Louise, Uruguayan for some reason becomes Oraguayan and Danilo becomes Daniel O, perhaps some relation to Jackie O.
The match demonstrated the best and worst of the world game.
Having scored the late equaliser in Lisbon in the same fixture two years ago, Sergio Ramos claimed the early opener in Madrid.
When Griezmann smashed a penalty against the bar, the missed opportunity was helpfully described as “a missed opportunity” by the commentators.
Real’s overrated Portuguese full-back Pepe twice collapsed holding his head as if decked by Tyson Fury or a sniper’s bullet, single-handedly providing ample evidence for AFL die-hards to deride the code for another decade.
Taking charge was Mark Clattenburg in the same week that he refereed the English FA Cup final. Every time someone was clattered or burned, Clattenburg sorted it out, responding to the second Pepe assassination attempt with dismissive body language that translated into Portuguese as “you look ridiculous”.
Simeone made only one substitution in normal time. It was enough. With 11 minutes to go Yannick Carrasco delivered the equaliser to take the match to extra-time and ultimately penalties.
Even that was top class. Seven of the nine kicks sent the goalkeepers the wrong way, one hit the post and the last enabled Cristiano Ronaldo _ the Steve McQueen to Zidane’s Yul Brynner _ to win the match and get his much-photographed tummy out.
Atlético may have won the last eight fixtures played between the sides in Spain, but crucially lost the big two on neutral European territory, thereby suffering the indignity of twice returning home to watch their conquerors parade through their city with the trophy.
Zidane became just the fourth person to win the competition as both player and manager as Real claimed an 11th star for their shirts.
More magnificent eleven than seven.