FOR the second time in three years, Madrid is the capital of club football. Atletico v Real isn’t just a re-run of the unprecedented derby in the 2013-14 final, it’s also the reaffirmation that, at least at the top end, at least as far as actual football being played on the pitch as opposed to global commercial deals and stadium naming rights, La Liga is a cut above.

You can twist things any way you like, but the numbers are as one-sided as they are terrifying. Since the turn of the millennium, La Liga clubs have won as many Uefa trophies (26) as the rest of Europe combined; the Premier League, in case you’re wondering, is second, with seven. And this at a time when the Spanish national side won two Euros and a World Cup.

In some ways, Real and Atletico are fitting finalists because they embody two different paths Spanish clubs have taken to success. Real are relatively simple. They, and Barcelona, were prime beneficiaries of the extreme polarisation in revenue at the top end of the game. Everyone got richer, except the one-percenters got rich by many more multiples than the rest.

And, yes, this matters. As much as we like to peddle the narrative that these are perpetual superpowers, the fact of the matter is that Real went 32 years without winning the European Cup, between 1966 and 1998. The same applies to Barcelona. They were European champ-ions once in the first 50 years of the competition and in the subsequent 10 years they won it four times.

But it’s Atletico who are more typical of the Spanish model. For a while, they tried to compete financially, a decision which left them (and others, most notably Valencia) on the brink of bankruptcy.

And so they got clever. They accepted the fact that they would lose their top stars every year. They took it as an opportunity. They got lean and mean, scouring the globe for players to replace the talent they inevitably lost. You can play a game where you imagine what their line-up would look like if they hung on to some of the superstars they were forced to sell. Add in David de Gea, Toby Alderweireld, Arda Turan, Sergio Aguero, Diego Costa and others to the current side and you get the picture.

It’s not quite the romantic, plucky underdogs story. Atletico’s recent history is one of generously renegotiated debts (with, among others, the Spanish tax man), external transfer financing and third-party investment, the latter two firmly situated in “grey areas” when it comes to Fifa regulations. But it’s the reality of the modern game where, if you want to compete, you need to be a bit “street” and walk the line.

In that sense, few managers are more “street” than Diego Simeone. Fewer still have built such a synergistic relationship between players and fans. The more the latter cheer, the better the former play. And the better the former play, the more the latter cheer. It’s a classic virtuous cycle, it’s how it’s supposed to work everywhere. Except with Atletico, especially at the Vicente Calderon, it works with eerie consistency.

The standard script is about Atletico’s street fighters versus Real’s Galacticos. It’s not quite that simple. Partly because Simeone can count on players – from forward Antoine Griezmann, to midfielders Koke and Saul, to centre-backs Diego Godin and Jose Gimenez – who could probably get into the Real side and hold their own. And partly because the snarling, counter- punching, uber-defensive, hanging-on-for-dear-life Atletico we saw against Barcelona and Bayern isn’t the side that turn up every week. Up against more talented sides coached by possession-utopians like Luis Enrique and Pep Guardiola, sure, Simeone will play a certain way. But Atletico’s bread and butter is La Liga and, in that context, we see a different side.

Where Simeone’s rise has been hard-scrabble, Zinedine Zidane’s has been straight silver spoon, as befits football royalty. Eighteen months at Real Madrid’s B-side and he was handed the keys to the Galacticos, replacing Rafa Benitez. There were plenty of reasons to expect failure: from the fact that he was taking over a glamorous but ill-assorted squad to his lack of experience to his often painfully shy personality, save for the outbursts of red mist.

But Zidane has confounded the critics. In 26 games in charge he recorded 21 victories, three draws and just two defeats. The big egos have behaved under his watch – certainly more so than with Benitez – and he not only took the side to a European final (only the fourth Real manager to do so in half a century), he also took Barcelona right down to the wire in La Liga, turning a 10-point deficit into a margin of just a single point by season’s end. Not bad for a guy with no experience.

Zidane has made the transition from superstar to resident icon to boss, without the safety net afforded to club legends. And he’s done it without road bumps while sitting atop arguably the biggest bubbling cauldron in football.

These two men, like their clubs, embody a different approach to scaling the heights of football. Simeone will be the one waving his arms and stomping around the technical area (or even, if we get a re-run of the 2014 final, on the pitch). Zidane will be largely motionless, his smouldering 1000-yard stare piercing the San Siro night.

Each needs to be the way he is to compete. Each is a product, for better or worse, of the modern game.

THE Football League’s proposals for a radical re- vamp, from three divisions of 24 clubs to four divisions of 20 clubs, have generated a fair amount of debate and now seem unlikely to pass. One of the main concerns is that each club would lose four home games, and corresponding gate receipts, which may be a legitimate objection.

Still, you need to wonder what century some of these owners live in.

“We’d rather play 50 home games, we need revenue,” said Andy Holt, the man who owns Accrington Stanley. “Our players will play as many games as we want. We pay them an annual salary, we want them to play games.”

Yup, that’s what the game needs. Owners who think that because they have players under contract, they can make them play until they drop.

Rather makes you wonder if Holt is a time-traveller from the Victorian era who ran his factories like sweatshops.