Simeone and Atletico: five years without a trophy, and the question nobody in Madrid can ignore

Bukayo Saka poked home a rebound off a Trossard strike just before half-time at the Emirates on Tuesday night and that was that. Arsenal 1-0 Atletico Madrid. Two-one on aggregate. Champions League final in Budapest. For Arsenal, it was the moment 20 years in the making. For Diego Simeone, it was one more door closing on a season that started with belief and ended with absolutely nothing to show for it. No La Liga. No Copa del Rey, lost on penalties to Real Sociedad in April. No Champions League. The record since his last trophy in 2021 now reads: five years, 15 competitions entered, zero won.

The Argentine has been here before. The difference now is that the question of how much longer this can go on has stopped being impolite to ask.

The numbers Simeone has built at Atletico since December 2011 are extraordinary. Two La Liga titles, two Europa Leagues, a Copa del Rey, and two European Super Cups. He reached the Champions League final twice, in 2014 and 2016, losing both to Real Madrid. He did all of it while selling players for money the club needed and replacing them with others who somehow kept Atletico competitive in a league dominated by two clubs with three to five times their budget.

Falcao was sold, Costa was sold, Griezmann was sold for €120 million, Partey sold. De Paul sold. Joao Felix bought for a club record and eventually moved on at a loss. The conveyor belt never stopped and Simeone never stopped winning things with whoever was left. Until it did stop. 2021 came and went and the trophies stopped coming with it.

This season was supposed to be different. Atletico had Julian Alvarez, signed from City for €75 million last summer and arguably their most complete striker since Diego Costa. They have Griezmann for one final season before his move to Orlando City in June. They have Ademola Lookman, who had spent the first half of the campaign proving he belonged at this level, and a defence built around Oblak and Le Normand that was the best they'd fielded in years.

They are fourth in La Liga, which is fine but not the challenge they need to mount. In the Copa del Rey, they beat Barcelona in the quarter-finals, which was one of the great Metropolitano nights of the Simeone era, only to lose a final to Real Sociedad from the penalty spot.

And in the Champions League, they beat Tottenham 5-2 in the round of 16, knocked out Barcelona again in the quarters, and then ran into an Arsenal side that defended their one-goal aggregate lead for 90 minutes in north London and didn't blink once.

Three competitions and three defeats in the moments that mattered.

The Copa del Rey final is the one that stings most specifically because of what Atletico gave up to get there. The quarter-final against Barcelona across two legs took a huge physical toll on the squad.

They went into the Real Sociedad final depleted in key areas, played a largely toothless 120 minutes and then lost on penalties to a side ranked ninth in La Liga. The sacrifice of depth for that run, and the prize it produced, was a defining moment of what this season became.

Per ESPN, Simeone's contract runs until 2027. Atletico confirmed in March that he stays regardless of how the season ends, and there have been no serious reports to contradict that.

He earned €25 million a year and there is genuine institutional loyalty on both sides. He is 56 years old, has managed over a thousand career games, and is the longest-serving coach in La Liga history. None of that is in dispute.

What is in dispute, increasingly among Atletico's own fanbase, is whether the model that served the club so brilliantly for a decade has run its natural course.

The argument in Simeone's corner is that Atletico are not Real Madrid or Barcelona. They do not have infinite money. Finishing third or even fourth in La Liga, reaching a cup final and a Champions League semi-final in the same season is, by most rational measures, a very good return for a club of their resources.

The 2021 title remains one of the most remarkable achievements in modern Spanish football, a squad assembled largely through the revenue from selling their own best players winning the league while both Madrid and Barcelona stumbled. If you asked most coaches in the world whether they would swap careers with Simeone they would say yes without hesitating.

But five years without a trophy, with a squad whose budget has increased since 2021 thanks to the Griezmann return, the Alvarez signing and the commercial growth the club has enjoyed during the Simeone era, is a different conversation than five years without a trophy on a shoestring.

Atletico spent practically more than any team outside the top two in Spain in each of the last two summers. They have Alvarez, Lookman, Griezmann and one of the best goalkeepers in the world. The squad is not an excuse anymore. And this season, when the pressure was highest, they lost the Copa final on penalties, scraped out of the Champions League quarter-final on a single Lookman goal against ten-man Barcelona, and were then outworked and outthought across two legs by an Arsenal side who weren't even playing their best football.

Griezmann leaves in June. Oblak turns 34 in January. The rebuild that the club needs is starting, whether Simeone drives it or not. His record says he can rebuild and win again.