Atlético Madrid beat Real Madrid 2-1 in the Madrid derby at the Metropolitano, in front of 70,514 spectators. The result leaves Atlético second in La Liga on 16 points after seven games, with Real Madrid fourth on 15, six points behind the leaders Barcelona, who have 21 under Hansi Flick.
It was José Mourinho’s first Madrid derby in 13 years, and it ended in defeat to the same adversary as his last one. Diego Simeone had beaten him on the Santiago Bernabéu night when Madrid lost the Copa del Rey final and a 13-year unbeaten run against their neighbours came to an end. Only the stage was new: the Metropolitano did not exist then.
The post-match press conference turned into its own spectacle. Mourinho arrived with a piece of paper — an A4 sheet printed on the back of an Atlético info sheet — carrying two first-half screen grabs, one above the other. The first showed Cuti Romero’s studs catching Jude Bellingham’s knee; the second showed Kang-in Lee on Fede Valverde’s ankle. Both should have been red cards, Mourinho insisted, and neither was given. It should have been nine against 11, he said; instead it was 11 against 10, because early in the second half Dean Huijsen dragged down Giuliano Simeone for the penalty that gave Atlético the lead and got him sent off.
He told the room they could save themselves the bother of the press conference because the story was right there. He did not leave. Five questions followed, four of them about the referee, and the answer to the one that was not about the referee was about the referee too. The official — 41 years old, not an international, and named in advance rather than 24 hours before kick-off — could not handle the pressure, Mourinho said, which was “like the 1980s”. He ran through decisions made by the VAR, Daniel Trujillo Suárez, which “make you laugh”, and there was talk of “strange things” happening. He insisted he did not want to think ill of officials, did not want to say the league had been “set up” for others to win, and did not want to think these were anything other than honest mistakes. He congratulated the referees’ committee and vowed to fight for the title despite being six points behind already — if they let him.
He also revived the “por qué” line he had used after a defeat at Betis, and there were echoes of him reading out 13 “errors” made by the referee Clos Gómez 16 years earlier. “I thought I would come back to find a different league to the one I left, but [at Madrid] they told me not and explained why not,” he said.
What Mourinho said little about was the football. Atlético took more than twice as many shots as Madrid and had two-thirds of the possession; they exercised control, cautiously but clearly. Madrid’s first shot on target came in the 39th minute and from 25 yards. The cards may have conditioned the game, but after the red card there was barely a spark — with Guler withdrawn, the reaction was minimal, and Atlético’s half was left largely unoccupied for most of that period. The goal Madrid did get, in the 89th minute, was an isolated moment, and it was followed by more chances for Atlético.
None of it would matter so much as a one-off, but the flaws were familiar. Madrid needed last-minute Carlos Espí goals to beat Espanyol and Elche, and they are already six points off the top seven weeks into the season. Barcelona are flying, and Fabio Capello’s 2006-07 title win is the only time Barcelona have ever held a lead that big at the top of the table and lost it. Claude Makélélé summed Madrid up as: “Nothing, nothing, nothing.”
For Giuliano Simeone, the afternoon completed a different story. Thirteen years ago, aged 10, he was told he was too little to go to the Copa del Rey final, so he hung scarves around the living room and watched from home with his brothers on a school night. He is 23 now and plays for Atlético, and on the day Mourinho — who called the two coaches “colleagues of war” — met Simeone again, he forced the penalty for the first goal and set up the second. Footage exists of Giuliano as a ballboy racing up the touchline and leaping into his father’s arms when Atlético scored against Madrid. A decade on, on another derby day, it happened again, only this time it was his dad sprinting up the line towards him.