Diego Simeone said it had been a special week in Madrid, a “tremendous energy about the city”, and it closed the way he wanted. He had enjoyed the Formula One, he said, and he had enjoyed going to see Shakira. He enjoyed this even more, at least he did by the time the last of many, many blows on the referee’s whistle brought it to an end, sending him sprinting up the tunnel punching the air. Two-nil up against 10 men through goals from Álex Grimaldo and Jonathan David, seemingly in control, a late strike from Antonio Rüdiger awoke old ghosts and brought tension to the final minutes, but they had done it.
“A lot has happened in Madrid this week but this was the only thing that mattered in his mind and mine,” Atlético’s goalkeeper, Jan Oblak, said. José Mourinho’s first derby back ended in defeat and recriminations: he turned up at the press conference with a picture of two moments in which he felt that Atlético players – Lee Kang-in and Cristian Romero – should have been sent off, and insisting that the story of the derby was there. And yet there are other questions: over the way Dean Huijsen gave away the penalty and got the red card that tilted the game against them, and the way Real played. How little they did until that moment when, briefly, they appeared to have a lifeline.
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