The enterprise and the fall. Of course, Bayern went through, getting rid of an orderly United, with more suffering than expected, and paving the way for the third consecutive Champions League semi-final. But today's news can only be that of Atletico Madrid's victory over Barcelona.
A one-to-zero in some ways paradigmatic, which brings the only real novelty proposed this year by international football to the very limited number of the greats of Europe, the only upstart without sheikhs behind to enter the elite of football. And to fully enter it: by killing the eldest, in an initiation rite that has nothing macabre about it, but which represents the cycle of things.
A simple football, that Atletico, but deeply studied, almost scientific. An oiled mechanism, in which the best attack, it must be said, is the defense, a very tight mesh network that allows the Colchoneros to cage every opponent, always creating numerical superiority and giving rise to frenzied counterattacks.
It was a logical match. No fireworks: Atletico produced Koke's goal after 5 minutes and the three woodwork hit by the possessed ex David Villa, master, in absentia Diego Costa, of the Madrid attack. Before, during and after he displayed an attentive and exuberant defense, which made the Blaugrana champions, Messi above all, look like a bunch of extras. People who passed by by chance, and who found themselves wearing the champions' shirts for mere physical resemblance.
The news is the fall of the gods, never so human, after seven consecutive years in the Champions League semifinal (perhaps the most significant data on what Barcelona has been in football in recent years), and entry among the big four Europe of Diego Pablo Simeone's team, now fully launched, he too, in the Olympus of the best coaches in the world. A return, for Atletico, after 40 years of absence. Tomorrow, four names will fill the ballot boxes in Nyon: the best of European football, and Atletico Madrid are no longer an intruder. Perhaps it is Real's rich cousins who are most afraid of the derby today.
