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| Benzima celebrates his winning score wit teammates |
At the final whistle, as the stadium was drenched in violent spring thunderstorms and Simeone appeared to beat his chest and roar at the crowd, it was hard not to feel the sense of a wider ending, too. There is no real indication that Simeone will leave Atlético. But there was still a feeling of something shifting here, of a farewell to all that for a glorious mini era that has been defined by these wild European nights at the Calderón and a series of glorious misses at the sharp end of this competition.
Atlético Madrid 2-1 Real Madrid (agg 2-4): Champions League semi-final – as it happened
Minute-by-minute report: Real Madrid will play Juventus in the final, though they had to withstand a spirited attempt at a spectacular comeback. Scott Murray was watching.
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Elite football is all about seizing these moments and Real have the chance to become the first team to retain the Champions League. It is a fine achievement in its own right, not least when at times these Merengues can look like an Eton mess of a team, as they did in the opening 20 minutes.
Atlético had begun with genuine fury, swarming through the back of the Real midfield in an early surge that bought two goals and dragged the tie back to 3-2 on aggregate.
Somehow Real always seemed to have another gear, that familiar neighbourly upper hand. Plus, for all the glitz there is a hard, tempered steel to this team of serial winners, who stood firm where others might have been blown away in that early onslaught. At times they looked untroubled in the second half as Luka Modric and Isco set the tempo.
This match had been billed as a kind of pre-farewell to Atlético’s crumbling home of the last half-century, a stadium of weird craning angles, excitingly open to the suburban skyline. Before kick-off the streets outside were surging with a red and white sea of chanting, horn-parping fans, and there was a great crackle of electricity as the teams emerged on to that square of scrubby lime green. There is one more Madrid derby to come but this was the last real gala occasion at the Calderón, a balmy, thunderous New Orleans-style street funeral after a fond 50 years.
This was also supposed to be a semi-dead rubber, Cristiano Ronaldo having taken his axe to the tie at the Bernabéu with that combination-punch hat-trick. But from the start there was a sense of something slightly chaotic in the air as Simeone began with Fernando Torres up front alongside Antoine Griezmann, a sign of the need to chase this game from the first whistle.
As Real kicked off Simeone was out pacing his rectangle in weird black plastic overcoat and skinny slacks, urging his team forward. To huge roars Real’s Sergio Ramos was upended and Luka Modric bundled. Torres drew a sharp near-post save from Keylor Navas. At the other end Jan Oblak plunged spectacularly to claw away a header from Casemiro.
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