Atlético Madrid and Arsenal will face each other in the second leg of their Champions League semi-final on Tuesday night. With the aggregate score from the first leg at 1-1, the tie is perfectly balanced as Arsenal coach Mikel Arteta and Atlético’s Diego Simeone seek to become European champions for the first time in their respective careers.
Under Simeone, who took over at Atlético in 2011, the club has experienced an unprecedented period of stability and, above all, has accumulated a handful of trophies: two La Liga titles (2014 and 2021), a Copa del Rey (2013) and a Supercopa (2014).
However, despite having reached the final on two occasions, they have never managed to win the Champions League. In both matches, in 2014 and 2016, it was their arch-rivals Real Madrid that took the trophy home. Nevertheless, Simeone remains a huge figure in the club’s history.
“He is someone who has transformed this club in 15 years, the way he has done it, with the consistency of the results he has achieved, how he has rebelled against everything…. I’ve always admired that kind of person,” said Arsenal’s Arteta ahead of the game. “In many things, he is an absolute reference point.”
For his part, Arteta, who will take his place on the home side’s bench tonight in the Champions League, has his own unfinished business in terms of winning titles. Like Simeone, before moving into coaching, the Basque coach was a player at the club he now manages.
As a player, Arteta joined Arsenal in 2011 under Arsenal legend Arsène Wenger. After five seasons in the team’s midfield, he decided to hang up his boots and move into coaching as Pep Guardiola’s assistant at Manchester City.
In December 2019, the Arteta took the reins at Arsenal. Since then,the Gunners have won three trophies: an FA Cup (2020) and two Community Shield titles (2020 and 2023). The club that has only won the league title twice since the turn of the century.
However, the fact that they have finished runners-up in the Premiership these past three years, despite playing an attractive game and dominating much of the competition, the lack of more major trophies has left a bitter taste in the mouths of the Arsenal fans who are hungry for more.
“We have a tremendous challenge ahead of us,” Simeone admitted last week after the first leg at the Metropolitano stadium. “The substitutes came on and they were better than the starting players.”
Strikers leave much to be desired.
The two clubs share one common factor – their star strikers have left much to be desired this season.
Atlético’s Argentinian striker Julián Álvarez joined the Madrid club in the summer of 2024 from Manchester City for a fee of around €75 million. Since then, the Argentine international has scored just 25 goals in La Liga – eight of them this season.
As a result, and despite the fact that Álvarez was set to become the cornerstone of Simeone’s project in Madrid, in recent months it has become commonplace to see his name linked with a possible exit from the club, most likely to Barcelona.
Arsenal on the other hand will be counting on their Swedish star signing this season, Viktor Gyökeres, who arrived in the summer from Sporting Lisbon for a fee of around €70 million.
The striker had just had two superb seasons in Portugal, being the league’s top scorer during his time there. His arrival in London was seen as the key piece missing for the team to win the Premier League. He has scored 14 league goals so far this season, but has largely gone missing in big matches.
Fireworks set off outside Atlético’s hotel
Reports in Spain claim that Atlético Madrid have reported to European football’s governing body UEFA that fireworks were set off outside the hotel where the team is staying in London.
The incident took place at around 1:30 am local time when the squad were at the Courthouse Hotel in Shoreditch. A group of people approached the hotel and set off several fireworks with the apparent aim of unsettling the players and coaching staff.
Atlético reportedly emphasised their displeasure with the apparent ease with which the perpetrators were allowed to approach the hotel, despite the fact it was in a busy part of London.