Episodes II and III will have to be very, very special if the Madrid Trilogy is going to end as well as it started. Not content with facing each other three times in three competitions and three weeks, Atlético and Real decided to play half an hour more just for the fun of it, scoring three goals each to take a sixth successive derby knockout tie into extra time. There, a wild, wonderful game was finally finished off when Jan Oblak, the Atlético goalkeeper, up for one last throw of the dice trailing 4-3, instead found himself desperately chasing as Brahim Díaz broke clear and bent the ball into an empty net in the 121st minute to send his teammates streaming on to the pitch and into the final of the Spanish Super Cup.
It was a fitting finale for a frantic occasion: a game with lots of entertainment and eight goals, two of which were really superb and two of which were really very silly. Most were not exactly scored by the usual suspects. Antoine Griezmann got the best to overtake Luis Aragonés as Atlético’s all-time top scorer, sure, but not many would have predicted strikes for Mario Hermoso, Toni Rüdiger, Ferland Mendy and Dani Carvajal, defenders all. Or own goals from Kepa Arrizabalaga and Stefan Savic, the latter finally handing Real an extra-time lead that would see them through. Just.
Ultimately the first meeting between these two sides, who meet each other in the Copa del Rey next week and the league at the start of February, had 30 shots and went from 1-0 to Atlético to 2-1 to Real, from 3-2 Atlético to 5-3 Real. It wasn’t definitively over until the very end, when Díaz, on as a subtitute, was standing there with his top off and everyone was trying to work out what had happened. The answer was a bit of everything, except defending.
By the end everyone was exhausted but for a lot of the game the technique had been exceptional, if facilitated by the feel of the two sides wanting to enjoy this more than is likely to be the case with the next two back in Spain.
It had been on show from the very start, and particularly in the move that led to the opening goal: built deep in one half and finished in the other, it went from Koke to the exceptional Rodrigo de Paul to Griezmann and then Samuel Lino, whose curler was pushed wide by Kepa. From the corner taken by Griezmann, Hermoso stood all alone and headed Atlético into the lead. When Real then boxed Atlético in soon after, they did it again, this time going from their own left corner to Real’s left-hand post, where Marcos Llorente’s ball found Álvaro Morata and his shot hit the side-netting.
Real were struggling to get a grip of those early phases, yet Atlético know all about their refusal to fold and they soon led. Jude Bellingham sent a deflected shot wide and, from the corner, there was Rüdiger to head in a goal that was a virtual copy of that moment from the European Cup final in Lisbon, a decade ago now but ever present. The taker was even the same man: Luka Modric.
It was the second game in a row that Rüdiger had scored and the third consecutive Real goal to come from a header at a corner, but that run didn’t last long. If that sounds routine, this certainly wasn’t: a smartly worked move finished with a fine flick of Mendy’s ankle to put his side into the lead. “That’s how Madrid win,” chanted the crowd in Riyadh, where Real are very much the home team, 5,000km away. It is not, though, what you most expect from the French full-back.
It was a lovely goal, worthy of what was unfolding – what the match lacked in tension it made up for in technique – and what followed was even better. Griezmann sent Aurélien Tchouaméni, Rüdiger and especially Modric the wrong way with an extraordinary backheeled turn that magically made a space appear that hadn’t been there a second before. Stepping into it, he fired right-footed past Kepa from the edge of the area, recovering the ball from the net and giving it to Diego Simeone for safe keeping. This, after all, was the ball with which he had just scored his 164th goal for Atlético – more, now, than anyone else ever – and levelled the semi-final.
Another moment’s fantasy came soon after when, with a shift of weight as quick and feet as fast as the Frenchman’s had been, Rodrygo left José María Giménez on the floor. Oblak, too, was falling the other way but somehow he saved with his legs, gratefully grabbing at the ball as it looked like it might spin over the line. It was the 14th shot of a hugely enjoyable first half, nine of them on target, and as the second began Lino hit another fractionally beyond the post. Then, released by a quickly taken Vinícius free-kick, Carvajal probably should have scored at the other end only for Oblak to block his close-range volley.
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By then, the volume had risen: Toni Kroos, who had said that Saudi Arabia’s human rights record was a reason he would never move to the country, was booed every time he got the ball.
The drama would rise, too, even if the game had slowed. Atlético took the lead again 12 minutes from the end with a goal that was bizarre and comic. Kepa jumped over Morata to try to punch a cross but all he managed to do was deflect it down on to Rüdiger’s leg and back into his net. The goalkeeper complained that he was fouled but it was the reaction of an embarrassed man clutching at straws – and he didn’t manage to hold those, either.
He was, though, rescued. With six minutes left, Vinícius zoomed up the left and raced into the area. Oblak saved his first shot, Savic blocked Bellingham’s follow-up, Hermoso cleared Bellingham’s second follow-up off the line but, steaming in, Carvajal slammed the ball in to make it 3-3. Brahim almost got the winner 91 minutes in, going past Hermoso with a superb stepover, but his shot went wide, sending another derby into extra time, where a dummy from Ángel Correa produced a similar moment for Atlético.
Atlético looked exhausted now and could only try, and fail, to hang on. The way it happened was cruel and a little daft, Savic’s interception bouncing over his own goalkeeper and into the net with four minutes to go and penalties looming. Griezmann then bent just past the post. As the final minute went up and Atlético chased, so did Oblak. Forced to turn back and pursue, he watched as Brahim Díaz got away and so did their last chance.
