Diego Simeone has become the coach Hansi Flick has faced most often since the start of his managerial career. All those meetings, though, have not handed the German an outright advantage.
Simeone dealt Barcelona two painful blows last season, knocking them out of both the Copa del Rey and the Champions League. The wound still hasn't healed for the Catalan boss.
According to Spanish newspaper "Marca", Flick has met Simeone 12 times since the start of his coaching career, whether during his spell at Bayern Munich or at his current home with Barcelona.
The German leads on wins. Yet Simeone claimed two hugely important victories of his own, ending Barcelona's run in two major competitions last season.
Their rivalry goes back six years, to 21 October 2020, when the pair first met in the opening round of the Champions League group stage.
The Allianz Arena hosted that one, and it belonged to Bayern. Flick's side swept Atletico aside 4-0, kicking off a series of meetings that would become a recurring fixture between the two men.
Since then the clash has been renewed again and again, the bulk of it coming with Flick at Barcelona. Ten of their 12 matches have fallen during his time leading the Catalans.
Across those ten encounters, Flick has racked up 6 wins, one draw and 3 defeats to Simeone's Atletico.
Those figures point to a clear edge for the German on results. On their own, though, they don't capture the pain inflicted by his Argentine rival, especially in the games that can't be split down the middle.
Two defeats explain why this complex lingers. The first came in the first leg of the Copa del Rey semi-final, when Atletico hammered Barcelona 4-0 and all but shoved them out of the competition.
That wasn't the only blow. Atletico's dominance carried into the Champions League, where they won the quarter-final first leg 2-0 at the Spotify Camp Nou.
Barcelona now faced a difficult task in the return at the Metropolitano, needing to erase a two-goal deficit. They couldn't do it, bowing out against their Madrid rivals.
The goals are always present
What sets these meetings apart isn't just the results or their weight in deciding competitions. It's the nature of the games themselves, which have never once ended goalless.
None of the 12 matches between the two has finished 0-0. Only one was settled by a team winning without reply, 1-0.
That tells you plenty about a clash between two different coaching schools, led by two men of clear personality. The rivalry has grown fiercer season by season, and it now carries special calculations, particularly for Flick, who is still chasing a way past the blows Simeone landed on him last season.