Today’s Champions League semi-final first leg between Atletico Madrid and Bayern Munich will be a special occasion for the Spanish capital’s second team.
Atletico have been waiting 42 years for the chance to take revenge on Bayern for one of the most painful moments in the club’s turbulent history.
That moment occurred on May 15, 1974, in the old Heysel Stadium in Brussels, when Atletico were seemingly on their way to their first European Cup triumph, leading Bayern 1-0 in the final thanks to an exquisite extra-time free-kick from veteran playmaker Luis Aragones.
However, with just 20 seconds left on the click, disaster struck for poor Atletico.
Bayern defender Georg Schwartzenbeck let fly with a speculative, almost desperate long shot, which shouldn’t have troubled experienced keeper Miguel Reina.
But Reina inexplicably let the ball under his body, and the 1-1 draw led to a replay two nights later in which weary Atletico collapsed 4-0.
“It was an awful moment in my career,” Reina recalled recently.
“I felt really bad for ages afterwards. I still don’t know how I let that shot go in.”
Reina - who is the father of Napoli and Spain keeper Pepe Reina - will be hoping that Atletico take full revenge on Bayern Wednesday - and in the second leg in Munich May 3.
Leading the charge for that revenge will be veteran striker Fernando Torres and youngster Antoine Griezmann.
Torres is finally running into good form 15 months after his return to Atletico, the club of his heart where he started his career and played until leaving for Liverpool in 2007.
He recently scored his 100th goal for Atletico then got on the scoresheet in five consecutive games, a personal record for him.
Torres, 32, scored the crucial away goal for Atletico in a 2-1 defeat at Barcelona in the quarter-finals, though missed the second leg - in which Griezmann stepped forward and scored twice in a memorable 2-0 win - after being sent off in Barcelona straight after his goal.
Indeed, his form is currently so good that he is being tipped for a return to the Spain side, that he so successfully helped at the 2010 World Cup and at the 2008 and 2012 Euros.
“It would be wonderful to have Fernando back in the team, if his current form continues,” Spain coach Vicente del Bosque said last week.
Torres hails from a dyed-in-the-wool Atletico family in the southern Madrid suburb of Fuenlabrada, and has fond memories of seeing his beloved team pull off an unlikely league-and-cup double in 1996, when he was 12.
The leader of the 1996 team was never-say-die midfield workhorse Diego Simeone, the man who has transformed Atletico in the past four years from the bench - and the man who persuaded Torres to return to the club in 2015, after a bleak spell at Milan.
“Simeone is a wonderful coach,” Torres said recently.
“He is the personification of the Atletico spirit. He really knows how to fire us up and how to make us believe in ourselves.”
Torres knows full well how keen the Atletico family is to avenge Bayern for that 1974 defeat.
“I obviously wasn’t around then but I have seen the film and heard the horror stories a thousand times ... Atletico should really have won the Champions (trophy) in 1974, we were just seconds away from victory.”