As Roy Keane once said, "You're a liar ... you're a fucking wanker. I didn't rate you as a player, I don't rate you as a manager and I don't rate you as a person. You're a fucking wanker and you can stick your World Cup up your arse. The only reason I have any dealings with you is that somehow you are the manager of my country. You can stick it up your bollocks."
Atlético Madrid are Champions League favourites. Be afraid.
Real Madrid are going to win the Champions League and there’s only one thing you can do about it.
Matthias Hangst/Getty Images
Wait, no, that’s the wrong quote. Sorry.
As Roy Keane once said, “Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.” In truth, that particular phrase may have been appearing on inspirational posters and in self-help manuals for some time, but we’re not going to tell him that. And whoever said it first, they were right.
With this is mind, let us consider the upcoming Champions League final. In the white corner, Real Madrid, who flailed their way past Wolfsburg in the quarter-finals and then, after 180 minutes of tedious and largely incoherent football, eased past Manchester City in the semis. Opposite them, in the red-and-white-striped corner, are Atlético Madrid, who were exceptional against Barcelona and pretty damn good, if not quite as secure, against Bayern Munich.
We all know what should happen. Come May 28 in San Siro, Atlético will be the favourites. They’ve got to the final with better performances against better teams, they play the better football on balance and they’ve got the head-to-head advantage so far this season.
With due respect the vagaries of taste, we feel pretty confident in suggesting that they will also be the favourites of the mysterious creature that is “the neutral”. Not just because their victory would be a better and more interesting story, but also because of how they play the game. Which is a little counter-intuitive, since their football is largely defensive and destructive and they are enthusiastic proponents of the full array of football’s dark-ish arts, from rotational fouling to time-wasting, from simulation all the way to chucking another ball onto the pitch when the opposition look to be breaking. None of which is, traditionally, what the neutral wants to see, even though quite a lot of it is very funny.
Atlético’s appeal comes, then, not from the style in which they go about their business but the manner. Even from behind the safety of a television screen, this is a team that quivers with a dangerous intensity; actually rubbing up against them on the pitch must be frankly terrifying. But that intensity is arresting, as a spectacle. There’s nothing particularly unusual about seeing a footballer wound up and brimming with emotional focus and fervour, but to see an entire team keyed up to such a level yet so in control of themselves — the occasional unwise yellow card aside, Fernando — is remarkable, the more so because they are apparently able to reproduce it from big game to big game.
Beyond that, there is a pleasure that comes from the sight of a football team working. Tottenham’s Toby Alderweireld, who spent a season at Atlético, describes Diego Simeone’s methods as follows:
He loves to focus on every detail, and during training he simulates every possible game. What if the left full-back moves up the field? What if the right full-back moves over there? What if there is a long shot?
The result is eleven footballers that always know exactly what their job is at any given moment. Where they should be, and what they should be doing with or without the ball. Much of the time, football is a fluid mess, and while that can be entertaining in its own right, so to see a side function as effectively as Simeone’s do is almost a triumph of engineering. Disparate moving parts all weighted and balanced against one another, operating in carefully calibrated synchronicity, turning a chaotic universe into something controlled and powerful.
Real Madrid, by contrast to all of the above, should not win. It would not be right. The trickiest part of their route to the final was running into Paris Saint-Germain in the group stage, since when they’ve been almost aggressively unconvincing against a series of limited opponents. Off the pitch they’re the usual mess of heavily-moneyed shouting, and on it they’re nothing special, an incoherent headache, significantly less than the sum of their parts. And while Atlético may not be any better than 2014, Real are probably worse. No, definitely worse.
So, back to Roy Keane. Simeone, as we've seen, knows the truth of Keane's maxim. But Keane wasn't talking to him; Keane was talking to us. Because hanging above all of the above is the swelling suspicion that the more righteous Atlético's cause come the 28th of May, the more likely it is that football is going to find a way to ruin it for everybody. That [shudder] Cristiano Ronaldo proving that having a good team is nice, but having one of the best goalscorers in the world is better. That Gareth Bale [wince] will show the meaty headerers of the Atlético team how meaty headers should be done. Or that [low moan, single tear] Sergio Ramos will pop up, in the last minute of injury time, again. That guy. Oh, that guy.
So, right-thinking neutral, brace yourself. Atlético should win, and Atlético should win, and so Atlético are almost certainly going to lose and it’s going to be awful. One of the most wonderful stories of modern football is going to be foiled at the last — again — by stupid Real stupid Madrid winning another stupid Champions stupid League. Reconcile yourself to the prospect of Cristiano Ronaldo standing on his own, smiling, pointing at his own face. And by doing so, preserve your own equanimity in the face of the horrors to come. That surely will come. Football loves you, but it hates you too, and if you’re not ready for that, then it won’t hesitate to tell you where you can stick it.
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