The Atletico de Madrid's descent into 'hell' of the Second Division reaches 20 years

The descent of Atlético de Madrid into the 'hell' of the Second Division reaches its 20th anniversary this Thursday, two decades since that Sunday, May 7, at the Carlos Tartiere in Oviedo, the red and white team saw its mathematical fall to the second-tier category, three rounds before the end of the tournament.

That fateful day had the presence of defenders Carlos Alberto Gamarra and Celso Ayala as starters in Atlético de Madrid, which could not remain in the First Division.

The most infamous date in the recent history of the red and white entity will seem to the youngest red and white fans, those who have enjoyed a historic streak of nine titles in the last decade, almost like a dystopian film, one of those so fashionable in the current times due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The fall to the 'hell' of the Second Division for Atlético was confirmed at the Tartiere with a 2-2 draw against the Oviedo team, in a match in which Atlético conceded two goals, equalized the match, but could not complete the comeback due to a penalty stopped by the Asturian goalkeeper Esteban to the Dutch forward Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, six minutes before the end of the match.

That afternoon, Atlético was led by the Serbian coach Radomir Antic, recently deceased, with a line-up of star players, including some survivors of the 'Double' in the League and the Copa del Rey conquered four seasons earlier.

Jose Francisco Molina in goal; Carlos Aguilera, Gaspar Galvez, Paraguayans Carlos Gamarra and Celso Ayala, and the later world champion with Spain Carlos Capdevila in defense; Argentine Santiago Solari, Czech Radek Bejbl, and Portuguese Hugo Leal in midfield; and Hasselbaink - the second top scorer of that League, with 24 goals -, with Kiko Narvaez up front. Juan Carlos Valeron, Ruben Baraja, and Jose Juan Luque came off the bench.

Oviedo, which was also fighting for permanence - achieved it but was relegated the following season and has not returned to the First Division since then -, was led by a true icon of the red and white history, Luis Aragones, who retired crestfallen after witnessing, from the opposite bench, the relegation of the team of his loves.

The Carbayon team lined up with Esteban in goal; Ivorian Idrissa Keita, Sergio Boris, Russian Viktor Onopko, and Frenchman Franck Rabarivony in defense; Portuguese Paulo Bento, Serbian Albert Nadj, Xabier Eskurza, and Argentine Roberto Pompei in midfield; and Slovak Peter Dubovsky with Roberto 'el Chino' Losada up front. In the second half, Frenchman Frederic Danjou, Brazilian Fabio Pinto, and Jaime Jordan came on.

Losada in the first half-hour and Paulo Bento, 20 minutes into the second half after the break, scoring a penalty committed by Gamarra on Losada, took the lead for the Oviedo team. In a corner kick, Capdevila surprised the Oviedo defense, and Hasselbaink equalized with a header from Kiko's cross; but in the penalty kick taken by the Dutchman, Esteban guessed the shot.

It was the verdict for a team that had been stumbling from the beginning of that season (it was in relegation places from the first to the eighth round, and then from the twenty-seventh to the end) and that during that campaign experienced three coaches and a judicial intervention of the entity for alleged crimes of fraud, misappropriation, and embezzlement.

An intervention that began, curiously, against the same rival, Oviedo, in the first-round match at the Vicente Calderón, on December 22, 1999. Atlético won 5-0 against the Asturian team, but the team was already in the relegation zone, in fifteenth place by then.

The Italian coach Claudio Ranieri, who had come after winning the Cup with Valencia by defeating Atlético in the final the previous season, resigned on March 3, and the one chosen by the judicial administrator to replace him was Antic, the coach of the 1996 'Double' who had already come the previous season towards the end of the campaign to take over the team after the period of the Italian Arrigo Sacchi and lead them to the Copa del Rey final.

The Serbian coach failed to reverse Atlético's league decline this time, under his command, the team only won one out of eleven matches (3-0 against Barcelona in the first leg of the Copa del Rey semi-finals, which gave Atlético a place in the final because Barcelona refused to play the second leg due to not having enough available players), and was eliminated from the UEFA Cup in the round of 16 by French side Lens.

The epilogue of that disastrous season for Atlético was with interim coach Fernando Zambrano, coach of the reserve team, on the bench, who achieved a meaningless victory in Mallorca (1-2) and lost the Copa del Rey final against Espanyol, marked by a trickery by Espanyol striker Raul Tamudo, who snatched the ball with his head from the Atlético goalkeeper Toni Jimenez when he was about to take a goal kick and scored the opening goal at the start of the match, which ended 2-1.

The 'year in hell' that was used as a slogan for the following season's Second Division season ticket campaign eventually turned into two, until the 2002-03 season when the head of Argentine goalkeeper German 'Mono' Burgos, now the second coach of Atlético, was able to emerge from a sewer in the capital to announce the return and the start of a reconstruction that would end with the titles housed in the Wanda Metropolitano today.

Twenty years of a very real 'dystopia', that of relegation to the Second Division of an Atlético that today looks back on that afternoon at the Carlos Tartiere from a distance. Two decades of the fall into hell.