#360view: Atletico still carry tag of underdogs

Andy West 11:33 17/01/2015
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  • Plucky underdogs: Atletico Madrid have proved their worth time and time again.

    Atletico Madrid’s comprehensive defeat at Barcelona six days ago led to some speculation that the bubble has finally burst for Diego Simeone’s team.

    The same reaction met each of their losses last season, with the general assumption being that their La Liga title challenge would eventually flounder.

    We all know what happened then, of course, and Atletico’s relatively comfortable Copa del Rey victory over Real Madrid suggests that their ability to respond to setback in magnificent fashion has not diminished.

    Still it appears that few people regard Diego Simeone’s men as contenders for any trophies: the current odds on Atletico winning the Champions League, for example, are roughly the same as Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain.

    The ongoing perception of Atletico as overachievers was summed up recently by Barca and Real bosses Luis Enrique and Carlo Ancelotti, who both talked up their teams’ impending meetings with Atletico by describing Simeone’s team as “one of the best in Europe”.

    As the La Liga title holders and Champions League holders, that description really shouldn’t be necessary.

    Can you imagine any manager or pundit ever feeling the need to label Bayern Munich, for example, as “one of the best teams in Europe”? That never happens because it is already a well-received truism.

    Atletico, however, still suffer from such a lowly reputation that there’s an element of surprise to hear them being described in such terms, with Enrique and Ancelotti sounding as though they were trying to convince themselves as much as anyone else that Atletico should be taken seriously.

    Simeone, of course, would love to keep it that way. He thrives on his team being regarded as plucky underdogs who have to scrap tooth and nail for everything they get – he likes them to be seen as “representing the people on the street”, as he famously put it last year.

    Having started the season by claiming his team’s direct rivals are Sevilla and Valencia rather than Barca and Madrid, Simeone certainly won’t be talking up their chances of claiming more silverware over the next few months and he would prefer it if everybody else continued to disregard them too.

    Fernando Torres, Thursday’s two-goal hero at the Bernabeu, fits perfectly into that mould. In the last couple of years, the striker’s stock has fallen from much-feared superstar to a slightly comical has-been.

    Nobody is laughing now and Simeone’s calculated gamble to sign a striker who has something to prove  is already paying off.

    If his first season back at Atletico finishes with silverware, we shouldn’t be surprised – but we probably will be.

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