An Off Day for Atléti: Changing All-White for Red and White in Madrid

Welcome back to the series "Away Days" where our writers share their experiences of attending football matches not just in England, but also around the world. In this edition, I'm going to be recounting my experience of attending an Atlético Madrid match, switching Los Blancos for their noisy neighbours.

Germán, por favor no me matas!

Before saying anything else, I must provide a disclaimer: I"M NOT AN ATLÉTICO MADRID FAN! Within Spanish domestic football I have 2 teams I genuinely support, Real Madrid and Barcelona. I've spent time living in both places and have friends from both sets of fans so I cannot separate the two. So, I beg of my dear friend and strong Madrista Germán, I only attended an Atléti game because the bigger team was out of town!

I ended up visiting the Wanda Metropolitano during the home leg of my 11-week trip around Spain and Portugal, finishing up in Madrid and then Barcelona. These are two cities who hold uncountable memories from exchange trips to my year abroad. During my final leg my family came to see me, a special moment as I hadn't seen my Mum and Dad in 2.5 months by this point. My brother Will extended his stay and came with me as I continued onto Barcelona. Before this, we decided to see what Griezmann and co. could do!

During my stay in Madrid, I was reunited with my exchange partner Germán and his family and showed my family the sites of Madrid and Toledo. We also ate a lot of food, visiting the famous San Ginés churrería and having some Brazilian rodizio instead of tapas (I had wayyyy too much tapas during my time away). Having solo travelled for so long, it was refreshing to be surrounded by familiar faces. It's safe to say that I had a blast in Madrid.

Menos de la familia, más del fútbol

Coincidentally, Atlético Madrid's match against Osasuna coincided with the final day of the Premier League 23/24 season with Manchester City and Arsenal vying for the title. Will and I headed to a bar near the stadium to watch Man City cruise to victory againstWest Ham, stopping our fiercer rivals Arsenal securing the title. About cinco pintas (o jarras, depende de dónde eres) más tarde, we headed to the huge stadium of Wanda Metropolitano. With a capacity of 70,000, it's a monster of a stadium.

A sea of red and white filled the stadium. The Wanda Metropolitano is an impressive stadium, it was a real honour to be able to walk into it. Prior to the match Will and I had high hopes for an Atléti routine win, the match that followed was far from that.

Osasuna should be given lots of credit for how they set up and demolished Atléti on the counter. Their first goal came from front man Raúl García who tapped in an easy goal in the 26th minute.

Following the interval at half-time, we were expecting a reaction from a very subdued Madrid side. In fact, the opposite occurred, seeing Aimar Oroz finishing a scruffy goal, silencing the home crowd.

Atlético Madrid finally conjured a response through Álvaro Morata with an easy tap in. The home support broke into chorus of "lo-lo-lo" despite still trailing the match.

However, Raúl García and Lucas Torró rubbed more salt into the wounds of Atléti, adding two goals to result in a convincing and demoralising scoreline of 4-1 to Osasuna. In the grand scheme of La Liga, Madrid had already secured Champions League and couldn't go down nor up so it made more sense for their poor performance. Hats off to Osasuna who brought great counter-attacking football to the Wanda Metropolitano!

Despite the result, it was still incredible to see the likes of Griezmann, Oblak and De Paul in action. Whenever I travel, it is always so special to attend football matches and partake in the magic of the game in every corner of the world. The next time you go travelling, if you're a football fan, see if you can find a local game which lines up with your plans, you won't regret it!