The thorn that Carlo Ancelotti said was wedged in Atlético Madrid’s side remains buried in their flesh, deeper and more painful than ever before, never to be removed. For a sixth time they faced their city rivals in Europe – 2025 joining 1959, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 – and for a sixth time they were defeated. Utterly, perhaps eternally defeated. The team that lost one European Cup final derby after a 93rd-minute goal and another on penalties fell once more, and this time may even have been the worst of all, another chapter in the never-ending story.
All of which may sound a bit much for a last-16 tie but the pain accumulates, each loss crueller than the last, and if the final result was oddly inevitable, how it happened was unthinkable, even for a battle between these two. If Atlético didn’t beat Real this time, they may feel they never will. Just when it seemed that fate might have shifted their way at last, it twisted the knife again. “I go in peace,” Diego Simeone said after, insisting that in their silent, lonely moments Real will reflect that over all these years no one made them suffer like his team. Perhaps they will, yet they always survive, and here they did it again.
