By Andrew Warshaw
May 30 – Nobody remembers the losers. Real Madrid may have collected Europe’s elite club trophy for the 11th time on Saturday but for millions of neutrals watching round the world on television, the sight of Atletico Madrid’s crestfallen supporters in the San Siro told a far more potent story.
For the second time in three years, Atletico came within a whisker of downing their illustrious cross-town rivals, only to be denied at the death, this time by the lottery of a penalty shootout.
Real’s pedigree and superior squad cannot be questioned while Zinedine Zidane – whose brilliant volley against Bayer Leverkusen won the 2002 Champions League for the club as a player – has already cemented his status at the Bernabeu just five months into the job as coach.
But only the most diehard Real fans could fail to feel for Atletico, whose dream of a first ever Champions League crown continues, a sad postscript to a game they scarcely deserved to lose in such cruel circumstances having been the better team throughout the second half and most of extra time with a trademark never-say-die performance.
To rub salt into Atletico’s wounds, it was a semi-fit Cristiano Ronaldo, a peripheral figure throughout, who struck the winning spotkick that turned one half of the San Siro into raptures and the other half into shattering despair.
“What I’ve brought to Real is my positive attitude. I believe in hard work, we already have a lot of quality in the team. But work is more important than quality,” said Zidane whose players controlled a one-sided opening 45 minutes but then had to dig deep.
Yet the lasting memory for many neutrals will be of Diego Simeone’s Atletico, who were within a minute of winning both the 1974 European Cup final and 2014 Champions League finals, coming agonisingly close once again, this time even missing a spotkick in first-half regulation time.
“It hurts to see the people who paid for the tickets and I couldn’t give them what they wanted. That hurts more than anything else,” said Simeone whose team beat Barcelona and Bayern Munich on the way to the final but again came up short when it mattered most.