Comment: The Mother Of All Comebacks Is Real Now

Atletico Madrid would not win the league this season and would in all probabilities not finish in the top four. If Deportivo la Coruna continue gathering the points and Malaga keep on picking up the wins, they would not even end up in the top six.

They are still in with a chance to progress in this season’s UEFA Champions League but have to get on a high before the match if they aspire to overcome FC Porto at the Estadio do Dragao.

They sacked their best coach in years not very long ago, the coach who had led Atleti to their first Champions League campaign in 11 years after the team tried for most of last season to prolong the agony of top-tier European glory, and replaced him with a former goalkeeper of Atleti who once hadn’t conceded a goal for 1,275 minutes in La Liga, who as a coach had managed four points in three matches and not much better football.

They have the world’s most talented footballer (Cristiano Ronaldo is from a different planet and Lionel Messi is from a different galaxy; so they don't count) who is being wooed by Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, Inter Milan (hell, throw Manchester United, Man City and Chelsea’s names into the hat too) and the world’s most peppered midfielder (read Maniche) who left the club after disagreement with the coach but returned with an apology. They have the worst defence among the top eight in La Liga and have Leo Coupet (or is it Gregory Franco?) as their number one goalkeeper.

They might be the 'second club' in Madrid and the third biggest in Spain but they are not the second talked about club in the Spanish capital- FC Barcelona are. Real Madrid supporters do not take Atletico Madrid as serious a rival as Barcelona. After all, Atleti are the Ghetto club, the Mattress-makers. So why give a toss about them? Madrid fans are better off more bothered about Barcelona than about Atleti. It’s as if they might as well not exist.

Only they do and on Sunday evening they showed how. Because on Sunday at the Estadio Vicente Calderon, they did what they have done five times already this season and did on six occasions in 2007-2008 (read score than more four goals in a match). Because on Sunday they defeated FC Barcelona. And lost to Madrid by winning the match.

This time Atletico needed three points to sustain their already dimmed challenge for a Champions League berth and needed a win. Which they got in a fashion that typifies Spanish football but defeating Barcelona implied winning the game for Real Madrid.

You see, at the start of the weekend, Barcelona’s lead was still a healthy seven-point. Then Real Madrid won their match against Espanyol 2-0, thereby downsizing the Catalans’ lead to only four points.

And on Sunday, Atletico made sure that four remains four, ensuring that their cross-city rivals’ title dream stays alive, thereby helping the Blancos. Not that Atletico want to help them but this time, like other times, they couldn’t help helping them. Unwillingly.

And neither could Abel Resino or Josep Guardiola help what went on the pitch. It was mayhem in a constructive way, goals coming in at regular intervals, a 2-0 lead being thrown away by a quickly degenerating Blaugrana defence that has failed to keep a clean sheet in their last six league matches, a Manchester United flop scoring an absolute screamer and eventually Carles Puyol serving the son-in-law of the man they call God of Football on a platter, thereby attesting that keeping him on a list of best defenders in the world ahead of Pepe and Roberto Fabian Ayala is, to put it mildly, wrong.

Not that Barcelona were that bad; it was just that this was one more game in Spain’s top flight (and how often do we see such cardiac-arrest inciting matches in La Liga!) that was played by footballers who know how to play football rather than a match that is played by managers in the drawing rooms with their formations charts and tactical nuts and the players neatly following their action like a RePet product.

Yet, Barca’s troubles didn’t go unnoticed. This is their second defeat in a row in La Liga, rendering the Catalan giants winless in four matches in all competitions. Of course, every team does go through an off period at one point or the other during the course of a season and whoever thought that Barca were going to sustain their 12 point lead by the end of the season was even more insane than the bloke who though bombing Iraq would eradicate global terrorism; but Barca’s drastic spiraling down of fortunes would certainly spark utterances of surprise.

Not that the Madrid fans care. From 9 to 12 down to 10, then to 7 and now to a mere 4, as Barca’s lead has been trimmed not as much by Madrid’s ten successive liga wins as by Barcelona’s own undoing, the Madridistas’ hopes of a third successive league triumph, unspoken of since the Barcelona Dream Team banged four league titles in the 1990s, have risen.

And now it is official. The mother of all comebacks is truly underway. No team in the history of La Liga has closed a 12-point deficit at the top and gone onto to win it but crazy things have happened this season.

Like a top team losing to the bottom team. Like a team winning at Camp Nou for the first time in 27 years. Like the country’s top two clubs losing their respective opening matches of the season.

La Liga title race is back on and it is more enthralling that the finish to the American Idol.

Subhankar Mondal

NB: "....Leo Coupet (or is it Gregory Franco?) as their number one goalkeeper..." Earlier in the season, former coach Javier Aguirre had the habit of playing Leo Franco and Gregory Coupet somewhat alternately.