Real Madrid have twice denied their local rivals Atletico Madrid the ultimate achievement
in European football, winning the 2013/14 and
2015/16 Champions League finals at the expense of Los Colchoneros . While Diego Simeone
has remained in charge of Atleti, Real were guided by Carlo Ancelot to their 2013/14
triumph, while current manager Zinedine Zidane oversaw their most recent victory.
Both games saw both teams deploy their standard formations, Atleti’s 4-4-2 against Real’s 4-3-3.
Initially a game of two set-pieces, before Real stepped on the gas in extra-time, Atletico
Madrid appeared to have nullified Real’s attacking threat before Ramos headed in to
force another thirty minutes. Atleti played their
customary 4-4-2 against attacking sides, sitng deep, with their strikers dropping off and
wide men tucking in, looking to use pace on the
counter to break. Real’s strikers could find little space between the lines, though
Benzema did occasionally manage to drop off.
Danny Carvajal pushed up as Koke tucked inside to try to create attacking pressure for
Atletico Madrid, and this was one of Real’s key outlets, until Real’s shift to more
of a 4-4-2, with Ronaldo pushed up, saw Simeone counter by moving his team to a 4-5-1. Real continued to target Atletico’s right
hand side, with Di Maria especially strong and
winning three yellow cards for fouls on him in the first 75 minutes, as Atleti’s compact
midfield in the centre meant Real could only really go wide. Marcelo , on for Coentrao,
provided more thrust down that flank and, after Ramos had equalised in stoppage time,
all the momentum and energy was with Real.
Real took La Decima and bested Simeone’s by then exhausted Atleti, but the red and
white half of Madrid had a chance for revenge two
years later, having only made the quarter-finals in the intervening campaign (when they were
also beaten by Real Madrid 1-0 on aggregate). The 2015/16 final was not dissimilar in many
ways to the earlier confrontation. Both teams had undergone some transformations in terms
of personnel, with Casemiro now anchoring the Real midfield alongside Toni Kroos , and
Atleti boasting the elite counter-attacking threat
of Antoine Grizeman up front, alongside returning hero Fernando Torres . Augusto Fernandez
had replaced Gabi, while Saul Niguez played on Atleti’s right hand side, another selection
that increased their threat on the counter. In this game, however, Real did not dominate
possession as much, which forced Simeone’s team to try to take the attacking onus, ​
something that does not suit them so much. Casemiro, Kroos, and Modric outnumbered
Atleti through the centre, even with Koke again drifting inside, which left Kroos unsure who to mark.
Again, Atleti sat off, worried by the same attacking trident that they faced in 2013/14,
which left a gap between the lines for Bale and
Ronaldo to drop into, and Marcelo to overlap into.
Ramos gave Real the lead in the first half and again, in the second half, Simeone switched
to a 4-5-1, with Griezmann tucking back and the
more direct Yannick Carrasco coming on, while Koke moved inside. This gave Atleti an advantage
in midfield and they were able to control possession better, while Real started to sit
back and soak up pressure. Kroos, who had been instrumental in blocking
up Real’s left-hand side, was replaced by Isco,
who tried to provide more of a link to Real’s front three, but despite this allowing Real
to hold onto the ball more, Carrasco equalised
to send the game to extra time and then extra- time and penalties. Cristiano Ronaldo, otherwise
a fairly peripheral figure in the game, scored the winning penalty.
The defeat meant Atleti became the first side to lose their first three European Cup or
Champions League finals, having lost to Bayern Munich in 1973/74 and, obviously, Real two years earlier.