Atletico find their mood

During the last decade, football fans around the world have witnessed a phenomenal growth in the number and the depth of the statistical categories about our favourite sport. In most cases, this endless pile of numbers and statistics brings us great comfort to try to predict the outcome of matches.

PierrePhilippe/GettyImages

Atletico's fans love Sergio Aguero

However, only last week Espanyol beat Barcelona at the Nou Camp. The bottom-of-the-table team had defeated the strongest, best performing leader in the history of La Liga at their own stadium, therefore officially finishing off anyone's hopes that we can actually predict the outcome of specific matches based on previous data.

We would have to find a more qualitative way to determine the likely outcome of matches. During his successful tenure as CD Tenerife coach, Jorge Valdano coined a fantastic definition of a team: "A team is just a mood". Valdano was referring to the collective state of mind of the group of players at any specific point in time, and that obviously varies from match to match. His definition also aimed to explain why technically superior teams can lose matches to clearly mediocre sides: the importance of motivation cannot be understated.

Taking Valdano's definition one step further, we could say that a football match is a clash between moods, the home team mood facing the visitors' and trying to defeat it. Guessing each team's mood would be the best way to anticipate a match result.

Derbies are probably best defined this way: tons of statistics prove that history is pretty much worthless in those matches. Motivation outweighs differences in skill, form and tactics, and it is actually when the game goes back to being a game and deserves to be watched with pure passion.

And if there is a match in which teams depend almost exclusively on their moods, that is Barcelona against Atlético de Madrid. This encounter has achieved its own status in the difficulty of predicting not only the outcome, but even the number of lead changes during the match.

Based on recent experience, Sunday's match had to be won by Barcelona. Their previous three encounters this season ended in clear victories for the blaugrana, including a 6-1 humiliating rout in Barcelona. In addition to this, Messi has repeatedly shown that he loves to play against Atlético, and that by itself should be more than enough to decide any match.

A superficial analysis of the colchoneros' mind would also point at a Catalan victory. My friend Jesús (yes, I have a friend named Jesús) distinguishes three levels of happiness for the Atlético supporters: the simplest is achieved when their team wins. The second level, a bit more fulfilling, is accomplished when Real Madrid is defeated. The third one, a complete nirvana for the Atlético faithful, happens when Real Madrid win with perceived support from the referee, as this gives any Atlético supporter to feel victimised and pester Real Madrid fans all week long.

Given this context, any Atlético fan would rather see their team defeated to Barcelona than have them collaborate with Real Madrid, even if it goes against Atlético's interest in qualifying for European competitions. We even have empirical evidence to support this: two years ago, Atlético and Barcelona played in Madrid under exactly the same circumstances (Atlético trying to get to a Champions League spot and Barcelona in the middle of their title run against Real Madrid).

The result, a flabbergasting 0-6 Barça win, was not as surprising as Atlético's supporters' reaction, simply leaving the stadium without a single boo or hint of protest. Their team had done just what they were expecting. Later on Fernando Torres admitted that this infamous match led him to leave for Anfield, frustrated by Atlético's lack of ambition.

DenisDoyle/GettyImages

Pep Guardiola: Testing times ahead

Therefore, a shallow examination would conclude that statistics and mood were on Barça's side on Saturday. But any Spanish football fan knew beforehand that things would not be that simple. Atlético playing Barça has always been a thrilling encounter, reaching its apex in the mid to late nineties, when they became crazy rollercoasters in which anything could happen.

One remembers a 4-3 Atlético win at the Calderón, in which Barça were leading 0-3 at halftime. Atlético's comeback in the second half was nothing sort of a miracle. Or a 5-4 Barça Cup win at the Nou Camp, in which Atlético was leading 2-4 at some point of the second half.

Those matches officially removed the ceiling of what could be expected from these two sides on a football pitch. Their recent history was not doing any justice to the fond memories most of us had about them.

And then it happened again. Who knows what passed through the minds of Atlético's players before the match. Probably they wanted to erase what occurred two years ago, or were frustrated about their poor Champions League outing against Porto. Whatever the reason, you could tell their mood was different, even when they were down 0-2 and 2-3. They were out to win the match no matter how, while you could also feel Barcelona were not that terrific side that made a habit of killing opponents.

Despite Guardiola's policy of resting players during the season, the team looks far from their best shape physically, and seem to be psychologically impacted by Real Madrid's successful run. Guardiola's main challenge will be to recover his team's attitude from the first half of the season, getting their mood and swagger back. We have seen a great Guardiola when things go well, now his endurance test has started.

And at this point of the season we (including myself) should all make a very simple mental note: the champions shouldn't be crowned until the tournament is over. Football seasons are long and it is difficult to maintain a high performing team in the same level for nine months. Great teams know how to come back, as Cruyff's 1994 Barça and Capello's 2007 Real Madrid proved.

For the time being, La Liga has become a two-horse race once more. That is at least until the madridistas play a born-again colchonero team next weekend in Madrid's most anticipated derby of the last few years. We will have another enjoyable chance to check whether mood is more important than statistics.