Real Madrid v Atletico Madrid
■ First leg: Tuesday, May 2, 10.45pm on BeIn Sports
■ Second leg: Wednesday, May 10, 10.45pm on BeIn Sports
So here they go again, another Madrid match-up at the business end of club football’s most prestigious competition.
Real and Atletico know the drill backwards, know that over 90 minutes, or 120, the margins are usually finer than tissue paper.
Ahead of the first leg of the Uefa Champions League semi-final on Tuesday, both coaches – Real’s Zinedine Zidane and Atletico’s Diego Simeone – have been obliged to set out new drills, fresh instructions because of selection setbacks they could do without.
The back four in which Simeone places so much trust, the one Atletico supporters can recite as second-nature – Juanfran, Stefan Savic, Diego Godin and Filipe Luis – will not be the quartet who seek to keep at bay Real’s fabled attack because of injury to Juanfran.
Zidane, meanwhile, has a dilemma over who to pick at centre-back, a choice between the France international Rafa Varane, coming back from a lengthy lay-off, and Nacho, who has covered ably in recent weeks for the absent Pepe, who broke two ribs last month.
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Uefa Champions League
■ Five reasons each team will win:
Atletico Madrid | Juventus | Monaco | Real Madrid
■ How to watch, UAE kick-off times and who will win
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Pepe suffered that blow in the last Atletico visit to Real, when they drew 1-1 in the Primera Liga.
It was a contest that conformed to type in many respects. Real had more possession, Atletico absorbed. Real took the lead, Atletico came back late to seal a point.
The starting XIs were identical to those that had lined up in the Champions League final last May in Milan, but for the presence in the Atletico XI of Yannick Carrasco.
In Milan Carrasco, another important injury miss for Tuesday, was the substitute who scored the equaliser.
Habits are hard to break, and the actors in this derby, which has reoccurred in last three Champions League seasons, twice as the final, know each other’s lines almost as well as their own.
Some patterns breed superstition. Real have not beaten Atletico at the Bernabeu in league meetings since 2012, though they eliminated their neighbours in the quarter-finals of the European Cup two seasons back, scorers, at home, of the one goal across the 180 minutes.
Mostly, Real know Atletico as defiant in defence. If it is not the huge hands of goalkeeper Jan Oblak that have frustrated Real again and again, it’s the headers and bocks of Godin.
And in the last 12 months, it has been the interventions of Savic, the Montenegrin who has over the last 12 months anchored himself a place in Simeone’s side.
Ask Cristiano Ronaldo, a picture of disbelief when, in the last derby, his goalbound drive was athletically headed off the line by a sprinting, leaping, superman-style Savic.
“The best save of the day,” said Oblak, who pulled off several very fine stops of his own that afternoon.
Eleven months earlier, when Savic was preferred as Godin’s partner for the last Champions League final, some eyebrows had been raised.
It was confirmation that Savic, 26, had displaced Jose Gimenez, Godin’s 22-year-old Uruguayan compatriot in Simeone’s hierarchy. And that Savic had put the disappointments of a brief spell at Manchester City, who let him leave after a single season, 2011-2012, well behind him.
He rebuilt his reputation at Fiorentina, Atletico signing the tall, slender defender from the Italian club two summers ago.
His role against the Madrid of Ronaldo, of Karim Benzema, against the threat of Sergio Ramos from set-pieces may be altered today by the long injury list Simeone has to grapple with.
Gimenez had been operating at right back after the experienced Juanfran pulled a muscle in the Champions League quarter-final against Leicester last month, but on Saturday Gimenez joined the Croatian right-back Sime Vrsaljko in the Atletico treatment room.
So Savic may have to shift to full-back, attentive to the runs of Real’s Marcelo and perhaps the exciting young attacker Marco Asensio, with Lucas Hernandez, the French defender coming in to the heart of Atletico’s back four.
Whatever the improvisation, it is a headache for Simeone. Atletico’s defending has been their forte, their rugged answer to Real’s riches up front over the past five years.
They need it to stand strong if they are to avenge the two lost finals to Real that are all too fresh in the memory.
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