Mourinho plays the greatest hits with printed protests as Atlético beat Real Madrid 2-1 in derby
There were many questions to emerge from the Madrid derby, which Atlético won 2-1 in front of 70,514 very noisy people at the Metropolitano on Sunday afternoon — even if not the one José Mourinho was asking. Like: what year is this? What was Dean Huijsen thinking? Why always Arda? Whatever happened to Vinícius Júnior? How come Koke is still the best? And above all: where did Real Madrid's manager get a printer from — and how did he get the bloody thing to work?
Thirteen years after his last derby — the Santiago Bernabéu night when Madrid lost the Copa del Rey final and a 13-year unbeaten run against their neighbours — Diego Simeone had defeated him again. The stage was new, but the adversary was somehow the same man, still dressed in black. In the press room, Mourinho unfolded a piece of paper and held it up. "We can save ourselves the bother of the press conference," he said, "because the story is right here."
Printed on the back of an Atlético info sheet were two screen grabs from the first half: one showing Cuti Romero's studs catching Jude Bellingham's knee, the other Kang-in Lee on Fede Valverde's ankle. Both should have been red, Mourinho insisted — and he was probably right, but neither was. It should have been nine against 11, he said; instead it was 11 against 10, because early in the second half Huijsen dragged Giuliano Simeone down for the penalty that gave Atlético the lead and got himself sent off.
Mourinho revived his famous "por qué" line, attacked VAR official Daniel Trujillo Suárez — a man "supposedly with history" — over decisions which "make you laugh", spoke of "strange things", claimed the pressure on the 41-year-old referee was "like the 1980s", and vowed to fight for the title despite being six points behind — "if they let us". "I thought I would come back to find a different league to the one I left, but [at Madrid] they told me not and explained why not," he said. Echoes, many noted, of him reading out 13 referee "errors" sixteen years earlier.
The football Mourinho avoided
What Mourinho didn't say was anything about the actual football — perhaps because there wasn't much of it. Atlético took more than twice as many shots and had two-thirds of the possession, having planned to overload Madrid's left. Madrid's first shot on target came on 39 minutes, from 25 yards, and after the red card there was barely a spark; Atlético's half was unoccupied for most of the second period except by a pigeon. Even the 89th-minute consolation was an isolated moment, followed by more Atlético chances.
The flaws are familiar. Madrid needed last-minute Carlos Espí goals to beat Espanyol and Elche, and are six points off the top seven weeks in. Hansi Flick's Barcelona are flying — Raphinha, filling in at centre forward, scored an outrageous hat-trick in a 3-1 win at Sevilla, taking him to 12 league goals in seven games, five clear of anyone else. "We give him the ball, he scores the goals," Fermín López said. Claude Makélélé summed Madrid up bluntly: "Nothing, nothing, nothing."
Giuliano's day
Some things do change. The last time these coaches met in a derby, Giuliano Simeone was 10, told he was too little to go to the final, watching at home with scarves hung around the living room. He is 23 now, plays for Atlético, and on the day these "colleagues of war" met again he decided the derby — winning the penalty for the first goal and setting up the second. There is old footage of him as a ballboy leaping into his father's arms when Atlético scored against Madrid. A decade on, it happened again — only this time it was his dad sprinting up the touchline towards him.