After more than a decade, the Copa del Rey will have another clásico final. First Barcelona played, then they resisted, expertly suppressing Atlético Madrid’s brief rebellion at the Metropolitano, and together those two halves, those two faces, took them through. A wild and open first leg, 4-4 at Montjuic, gave way to a tighter second won by a single Ferran Torres goal. Seville awaits football’s greatest rivals, both of them still chasing a treble. “Dreaming is allowed,” Hansi Flick said, “but we will have to work hard. At the club they have a lot of space for more titles.”
For Diego Simeone’s side, meanwhile, this was the end. In the five weeks since the first leg of this semi-final, a season that had set up to be superb instead escaped Atlético, all three major competitions gone. They have won just one of five games since then, and that was the Champions League second leg in which Madrid knocked them out on penalties. They also slipped nine points off the top in La Liga and now their cup run is over. They had taken their opponents to the line but could not get over it themselves. “There’s nothing to reproach,” the coach said.
