Atletico Madrid’s dream of becoming the first club outside Spain’s big two to win the title in a decade is not over, but it has taken a battering in recent weeks.
Three points clear at the top of the table at the start of February, they finished the month three points behind Real Madrid. The pair meet on Sunday at the Calderon. Another defeat for Atletico would see their title bid all but over.
At least they foresaw it.
“Atletico have a great squad, a very competitive one, but for a 20 games season, not a 38 one,” said full-back Felipe Luis at the start of the season.
It is to their immense credit that they were top of the league after 23 games and had also qualified for the last 16 of the Uefa Champions League, but the huge financial disparity in Spanish football was bound to kick in.
“Their budget is much bigger than ours. At the end of the day, it makes the difference,” Luis said.
And it did, though the pressure also hit them. No sooner had Atletico reached the top than they were defeated 2-0 at struggling Almeria on February 8.
Two weeks later they were defeated 3-0 at another struggling team, Osasuna. All three goals came in the first half with Atletico exhausted after their midweek triumph at the San Siro against AC Milan.
Their squad wasn’t strong enough to compete with far richer clubs; Madrid’s revenue was the only one in world sport above €500 million (Dh2.53 billion) last year, Atletico’s was €120m.
Madrid have looked ominously good and not only in their 6-1 midweek Champions League thrashing at Schalke in which Gareth Bale had his best game in a while after criticism that he had not been impressing sufficiently.
The "BBC" strike force of Bale, Karim Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo hit two each. Madrid have not lost a game since an October clasico defeat at Camp Nou, their record of 13 wins and two draws the best in Spain.
Barcelona have been defeated three times since that clasico victory, including twice in February. The next clasico is on March 23, and Madrid will feel that if they can win that then the league will be theirs.
Madrid are expected to triumph on Sunday, as they did when the pair met last month in the Copa del Rey over two legs, with comfortable scorelines of 3-0 and 2-0.
It was a return to form. Atletico went 25 matches without beating their main cross-city rivals between 1999 and the Spanish Cup final of last May, a game staged at the Bernabeu.
Atletico repeated that victory at the same stadium in the league in October, the first time they had won two consecutive games there since 1920 and 1921 and a result which led to a “Millions 0 Football 1” headline on the front of a leading Spanish newspaper.
It was also a moment when they began to be taken very seriously by Barca and Madrid as title contenders. Yet Atletico were still considered a long shot.
People thought they would run out of steam and pointed out they had been in the same position before.
In January 2013 Atletico were seven points ahead of Madrid but eventually finished below them. In January 2013, they remained ahead of their in-form rivals and by the start of February they moved clear of Barca, too, until they began to flag, as predicted.
They would go back to the top of the table with an unexpected victory on Sunday, but the manager Diego Simeone is a realist.
“There are technical differences between us and Real Madrid,” he said. “If we play 10 games against them it is normal to lose eight. Obviously, you don’t go into the match to lose, but this is football and we have to be realistic.
“The reality is that they are better than us, so they are more likely to win. But that doesn’t mean that they’re going to win.”
Atletico have had their two wins from that equation: can they cause an upset once more?
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