An All-Madrid Final Built in Barcelona

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Atlético Madrid’s Antoine Griezmann takes a shot during the team’s Champions League quarterfinal against Barcelona. Photo: Mike Hewitt/Getty Images

When the Champions League final kicks off Saturday in Milan, no team will have a greater impact on the outcome than FC Barcelona.

Which may come as a surprise, since Barcelona isn’t actually playing.

Instead, Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid are squaring off for European soccer’s most prestigious club trophy. But it’s likely neither of these teams would be here without their rivalries with Barcelona, a team that has won this tournament four times in the past 10 years. This is the final that Barça built.

From their playing styles to their rosters and managers, nearly every major decision by the two Madrid teams in recent years was made with Barcelona in mind. It isn’t always the stated purpose, of course, and sometimes it isn’t even a conscious choice. But this is what happens when your country produces a breathtaking trophy-grabbing juggernaut like Barcelona. Rivals make it their full-time job to stop them.

“They know that Barcelona is always the better footballing side,” said former Barcelona midfielder Ronald de Boer. “You look at Atlético and they accept that... Real a little bit less, but, of course, it’s in the back of their mind.”

This is the second time in three years that the final will be an all-Madrid affair. In 2014 in Lisbon, Atlético was seconds away from sealing its first Champions League title until defender Sergio Ramos tied the game with a 93rd-minute header. Real then pummeled an exhausted Atlético for three more goals in overtime and won its 10th European championship.

Now they’re both back in club soccer’s biggest game. To get here, Real had to fire a manager midway through the season when it looked as though Barcelona might be getting away in the Spanish league. At the same time, Atlético was perfecting an antidote to Barça’s flair.

“We know there are better teams than us. But we know we can compete against Barcelona,” Atlético manager Diego Simeone said this spring, before ousting Barcelona in the Champions League quarterfinals.

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Real Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo scores during last month’s 2-1 win over Barcelona in Spain’s La Liga. Photo: Juan Medina/Zuma Press

At Real, the nagging influence of Barcelona comes from a mutual fixation. Former Real Madrid manager José Mourinho famously said that Barcelona was “obsessed” with Los Blancos. But in recent years, the reverse has also been true. Seeing Barça capture the Champions League trophy four times in the past decade was particularly galling in the Spanish capital, where European supremacy is considered a birthright.

“Real is the biggest club in the world. They always have to win every competition,” said former Atlético Madrid manager Radomir Antic, summing up Real’s attitude. “There’s big pressure for them.”

Real midfielder Casemiro went even further. The Brazilian joined the club just three years ago, but has already come to terms with the expectations. “Whenever Real Madrid reach a final, we always have a duty to win,” he said.

Six months ago, Real seemed more destined for implosion than for Milan. Watching Barca’s three amigos of Lionel Messi, Luis Suárez and Neymar turn matches into shooting practice pushed Los Blancos to the brink of paranoia.

By December, fans had begun to worry their side was too defensive, even as it led La Liga in goals scored. The players had lost respect for manager Rafa Benítez. Losing the Clásico against Barcelona 4-0 at home in November didn’t help either. Benítez never lived down that result. In early January, he was fired.

For his replacement, Real reached back for one of the most gifted attacking players in the club’s history, a star of the so-called Galácticos era, when the team sought to assemble an all-star lineup of world stars. Zinedine Zidane had never previously managed a top-tier club in his life, but if Barcelona could promote Pep Guardiola from coach of the B side and reap the rewards of a soccer revolution, then why couldn’t Zidane—a far better player—make the same leap from reserve-team coach to the big-time, too?

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Zinedine Zidane was appointed Real Madrid coach midway through the season despite having no top-tier coaching experience. Photo: Cabalar/Zuma Press

“There’s always pressure at Real Madrid,” said Zidane, who scored the winning goal in the Champions League final for Real as a player in 2002 and lifted the trophy again in 2014 as an assistant coach to Carlo Ancelotti. “It’s part of the job and I like it.”

Across town, Atlético wasn’t good enough to develop real beef with Barcelona until recently. When the club hired Simeone during the 2011-12 season, it had just finished seventh in La Liga. This was the height of Pep Guardiola reign at Barcelona, when the Catalans were racking up titles with a dizzying passing style known as tiki-taka. Simeone knew he had to find another way.

He began to drill his men in the unglamorous art of team defense. Now, Atlético can absorb pressure like no other team in Europe. Its physical defenders move as if they were tethered to each other. It’s no coincidence that Atlético has attempted more tackles per game this season than any other club to reach the Champions League knockout rounds.

“Our work over the last few years is paying dividends now,” Simeone said.

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Diego Simeone schooled his Atlético Madrid team in the unglamorous art of team defense as a way to counteract Barcelona’s possession-based style of play. Photo: juan medina/Reuters

This isn’t the same team that defied the odds two years ago to reach the final. This version has knocked out the defending champions of Spain, Germany and the Netherlands on its charge through the tournament. It hasn’t always been pretty. In fact, it’s rarely pretty with Atlético. But the team’s tactics in Europe this season have been flawless.

Sides like Barcelona and Bayern Munich “are just thinking about their way to play the game,” Antic said. “Atlético is working hard to defend and many times they don’t even have 50% of the ball.”

In other words, forged in an age of Barcelona dominance, Atlético has become the anti-Barça.

Of course, just because Barcelona is responsible for this final, it doesn’t mean the club has to like it. For one, Barcelona’s players would do anything to avoid seeing Real Madrid so close to silverware. Which is why every Barça player with the chance to say he’s rooting for Atlético has been shouting it from the rooftops.

Defender Jordi Alba said he might not even watch on Saturday. He has more pressing matters to attend to. “I might play board games,” he said.

Write to Joshua Robinson at [email protected]