Atletico Madrid 2014–2020: Title Ten, Two Finals and a New Stadium

The most successful seven-year stretch in the club’s modern history, and the one that produced its two most painful nights. Both belong to the same era and, in 2014, to the same fortnight.

17 May 2014

Atletico won La Liga in 2013–14, sealing it with a 1–1 draw at the Camp Nou on 17 May 2014, the last match of the season, away to one of the two clubs that had won every championship since 2004.

It was the club’s tenth title and its first since the 1996 Double, ending an eighteen-year wait. The league record shows the two long droughts either side of it. This was the second one closing.

A Supercopa de España followed in 2014.

24 May 2014

Eight days after the Camp Nou, Atletico played Real Madrid in the Champions League final in Lisbon.

Diego Godin gave them a first-half lead. Real equalised, the match went to extra time, and it finished 4–1.

A first European Cup, a Double of league and Champions League, and a European final won against the neighbours were all lost in one evening, eight days after the best afternoon in twenty years.

2016: The Same Opponent, Again

Two seasons later the same two clubs met in the final again, in Milan. It finished 1–1 and Real Madrid won the penalty shoot-out.

Two Champions League finals against the same neighbour inside three seasons, both lost, sits alongside the 1974 defeat to Bayern in the three-finals record: three finals, three defeats, and in each one the club level or ahead at some point in the deciding phase.

2017: East

The club left the Manzanares in 2017. The last league match at the Vicente Calderon was played on 21 May, a 3–1 win over Athletic Bilbao with two Fernando Torres goals inside eleven minutes.

The Metropolitano opened on 16 September 2017 with a 1–0 win over Malaga, Antoine Griezmann scoring the first goal at the new ground. The name revived that of the club’s home from 1923 to 1966, the ground the Calderon itself had replaced. Both stadiums have their own pages: the Calderon and the Metropolitano.

2018: Lyon and Tallinn

The era’s last trophies came in 2017–18. Atletico won the Europa League, beating Marseille 3–0 in Lyon, in the same season they finished runners-up in La Liga.

The UEFA Super Cup followed: Real Madrid beaten 4–2 after extra time in Tallinn. Two years after Milan, a European final against the same opponent finally went the other way, and it is spoken about at a volume the competition does not normally command.

The Fortnight

Nothing else in the club’s history compresses so much into so short a span. On 17 May 2014 Atletico won a league title away at the Camp Nou, ending an eighteen-year wait. On 24 May they lost a Champions League final to Real Madrid after leading it.

Supporters who describe the club as el pupas, the hard-luck club, are usually reaching back to 1974 for the origin, but 2014 is the modern proof. A first European Cup, a Double, and a European final won against the neighbours were all available on the same evening and all lost, eight days after the best afternoon in a generation.

What Was Actually Built

Reading the era only through the two finals undersells it. Between 2014 and 2020 the club won a league title, a Supercopa, a Europa League and a UEFA Super Cup, reached two Champions League finals and finished league runners-up twice more. That is four trophies and four near-misses at the highest level in seven seasons, from a club that had been in the second division within the previous fifteen years.

The honours list shows how much of the cabinet was filled in this single stretch.

The Move East

The stadium change belongs to the era as much as the results do, and it altered the club in ways the trophy count does not capture: a ground holding 54,907 replaced by one that opened at 68,456, a riverbank site swapped for a district near the airport, and a matchday geography rebuilt from scratch. Both grounds have their own accounts: the Calderón and the Metropolitano.

Fernando Torres, who had come through the academy and captained the club before leaving in 2007, returned for a second spell and scored twice in the final league match at the old ground. He is in the legends gallery for both spells.

The Near-Misses

Runner-up finishes in La Liga in 2017–18 and 2018–19 close the period. Twenty-one top-two seasons in the club’s history, and two of them fall consecutively here, between the tenth title and the eleventh.

That eleventh arrives in the next era.