LaLiga Preview: Can Simeone and Atletico Madrid Scratch Their Barcelona Itch?

It had started brightly, quickly became complicated and then fizzled out to more of the same. As a pattern, it was all too familiar, and in their case, familiarity doesn’t breed contempt but fury.

At the Camp Nou in January, Atletico Madrid had gone ahead against Barcelona following an early burst, Koke finishing a fine team move. Right there, they were dominant and purposeful; it looked as though things would be different this time, and that was the cruel part. Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez hit back quickly, Filipe Luis and Diego Godin subsequently lost their heads, and Atleti just lost. “Happiness,” the American poet Ogden Nash once said, “is having a scratch for every itch.”

If that’s true, Diego Simeone and Atleti haven’t got there yet. 

For the Argentinian and his players, Barcelona have become the itch for which they haven’t had a scratch. Since Simeone’s arrival at the Vicente Calderon in late 2011, his side have faced the Catalans in the league on nine occasions and are yet to win. Their record in that time reads two draws, seven losses, 17 goals conceded and only seven scored, the pattern maddening for them: go ahead, suffer blows, can’t quite hit back.

In four of their last five losses in all competitions to Barca, Simeone’s men have grabbed the first goal; in three of them, they’ve then had men sent off; in two of those, two were.

Atleti have enjoyed success against them in Europe, yes, but between the league’s last two title winners it’s a balance that’s curiously lopsided domestically, as though Barcelona’s circumstances haven’t seemed to matter, and in a way, that’s true. 

Even in their low moments, the Blaugrana have fought past the men from the Calderon. Their 3-1 win in January 2015 in the middle of an institutional crisis was striking in both its style and its rebellion against mood, the night becoming the take-off point for the current incarnation of Barca. In the two completed seasons since Luis Enrique’s switch to the Camp Nou, Barcelona remain the only club of 22 in LaLiga that Atleti haven’t beaten. Tenth time lucky? 

You sense Simeone isn’t a believer in luck, but he needs something to change in the picture of this rivalry.

On Wednesday, his side travel east to Catalonia at a delicate time in their young season, confidence having only recently started to build. “There is never an ideal time to visit Camp Nou,” said Fernando Torres to beIN Sports (h/t AS). “But now’s as good as any.” On the back of thumping wins over Celta Vigo and Sporting Gijon, it probably is, the sluggishness of their opening stalemates with Alaves and Leganes blown away by an uncharacteristic eruption. 

But Barcelona are not Celta or Sporting. Enrique’s men are fresh from some demolition jobs of their own, seven put past Celtic and five past Leganes. Against the former, Barca were so sublime that Brendan Rodgers said “you can put as many players as you want there” and it makes next to no difference. Enrique added: “There’s little they [opponents] can do to stop it when we play with this precision.”

It’s that precision that has derailed Atleti. Week after week, Simeone’s players have grown accustomed to asphyxiating their rivals in Spain, but the Catalans have always wriggled free, just enough.

The Atletico boss has tinkered with his method …

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