Enrique Collar Atlético Madrid profile, career and honours

Seventeen seasons on the wing

Enrique Collar played for Atlético Madrid from 1952 to 1969 and made 470 appearances, scoring 105. Only Adelardo and the modern trio of Koke, Jan Oblak and Antoine Griezmann have played more for the club among the names in the legends gallery.

His career and Adelardo’s overlap for a decade, and between them they cover almost thirty unbroken years of the club’s history.

The first European trophy

The single most significant result of Collar’s era came in the 1962 European Cup Winners’ Cup, which Atlético won 3–0 against Fiorentina after a replay.

It was the club’s first European honour, and it carried a detail supporters have enjoyed ever since: the Cup Winners’ Cup was the only major European trophy Real Madrid never won. The European record shows what followed: forty-eight years before the next one, in Hamburg in 2010.

Atlético reached the final again the following season and lost it.

Three cups in six seasons

The Copa del Rey came in 1959–60, was retained in 1960–61, and returned in 1964–65, giving the club its first back-to-back cups, and three trophies inside six years.

The cup record shows how much of Atlético’s silverware has arrived through this competition in periods when the league would not come, and Collar’s years are the clearest case: three cups and a European trophy against a single championship.

The championship at the end

That championship arrived in 1965–66, in Collar’s fourteenth season and the last the club played at the old Metropolitano.

The following autumn Atlético moved to the Vicente Calderón. Collar played three more seasons at the new ground before finishing in 1969, which makes him, like Adelardo, one of the few players whose career spans both homes.

The era around him

The 1950–1965 period is the one the club’s history describes as excellence that did not quite convert. Atlético finished league runners-up in 1957–58, 1960–61, 1962–63 and 1964–65, and champions once. Seven top-two finishes in sixteen seasons produced three trophies of the highest domestic order and one European.

Collar was present for essentially all of it, which is why the honours attached to his name look scattered across competitions rather than concentrated in the league.

What the record shows and does not

470 appearances and 105 goals is the profile of a winger who played most weeks for seventeen years and contributed goals without being the side’s primary scorer. That role belonged to Adrián Escudero early in his time and to Luis Aragonés at the end of it.

The records page holds the totals. What it cannot show is that his career began the season after two league titles and ended three seasons before the next, which is the kind of timing the legends gallery makes visible only when the spans are set side by side.

Where the seventeen seasons sit

Collar joined the season after the second Herrera title and left three seasons before the 1969–70 championship, which means his career brackets the two league-winning periods without belonging fully to either.

What fell inside it instead was the club’s first European trophy and its first three Copas del Rey, the honours that turned Atlético from a side that had won two championships in the 1950s into one with a European record and a cup pedigree.

The 1950–1965 era page treats that as the period’s real achievement, and Collar was present for the whole of it. So, from 1959, was Adelardo; the two overlap for a decade.

A hundred and five goals from the wing

The scoring total is modest beside the forwards of his era, and it is the wrong yardstick for the position. A hundred and five goals across 470 appearances, from a player whose job was to supply them, is a substantial secondary contribution across seventeen seasons.

How long did Enrique Collar play for Atletico Madrid?

Seventeen seasons, from 1952 to 1969, making 470 appearances and scoring 105 goals.

What did Collar win with Atletico?

The 1965–66 La Liga title, three Copas del Rey (1959–60, 1960–61, 1964–65) and the 1962 European Cup Winners' Cup, the club's first European trophy.

What was Atletico's first European trophy?

The 1962 Cup Winners' Cup, won 3–0 against Fiorentina after a replay. It was the only major European competition Real Madrid never won.

Did Collar play at the old Metropolitano?

Yes, for fourteen seasons, including the 1965–66 title won in the ground's final year. He played three more at the Vicente Calderón after the 1966 move.