Antoine Griezmann's Last Chance for Champions League Glory
Antoine Griezmann has always known how to pick his moments. Goals in finals, overhead kicks, the pink hair, the Fortnite dances. Now, at 35, he is about to make one more dramatic turn: leaving Atlético de Madrid this summer for Orlando City in Major League Soccer and closing the book on one of the club’s defining careers.
Nearly 500 games. More than 200 goals. Two spells, a broken transfer saga, a redemption arc, and a bond with a fanbase that went from devotion to doubt and back to something even deeper. He will walk away as one of the great Rojiblancos of the modern era, and he still has one last obsession in front of him.
The Champions League.
Ninety-six of Griezmann’s Atlético appearances have come in the UEFA Champions League. He is guaranteed at least two more, with a semi-final against Arsenal looming. If Atleti go through, he gets a third – a final chance to rewrite the moment that has haunted him for almost a decade.
For Griezmann, this competition is not just another trophy. It is the scar tissue of 2016.
That year he came as close as he ever has – or ever may. Thirteen games, seven goals, Atleti in the final in Milan against Real Madrid. He led the line, carried the team, dragged them through nights that suited his blend of grit and guile. Then came the 48th minute. A penalty. Crossbar. Atleti would eventually lose on spot-kicks, and the missed chance has never really left him.
“It’s not something I think about every day, but whenever we talk about the Champions League with friends or team-mates, that moment always comes up, 2016, the penalty,” he admits. The wound is still open. This campaign, he has decided, is the only bandage that fits: “It would heal a very deep wound. The only way to get over it would be to win it this year.”
That is the emotional charge behind this final European run. This is not a farewell tour. It is a chase.
From La Real to a second home
Griezmann’s story in the Champions League began long before red and white stripes. He broke through at Real Sociedad, making his senior debut in 2009 after coming through the Basque club’s academy. By 2013, he was stepping onto the biggest stage in Europe with La Real, the first steps of a journey that would eventually see him become just the fourth French player to reach 100 Champions League appearances.
Leaving San Sebastián in 2014 was painful. “They opened their doors to me at what was a difficult time for me when I was 14,” he says. “I said that when I left La Real I wouldn’t feel the same about any other club.”
Then he met Atlético.
The surprise for Griezmann was not that he fit Simeone’s football. It was that he fell in love with the place. Quickly. Deeply.
“When I joined, I felt the same feeling twice over,” he explains. “The word would be something way beyond love.
“Love for the club’s colours, the club’s badge and love for football, because the fans love football, and love for hard work – I think that’s why I quickly bonded with the club and its fans.”
The connection was instant. So was the impact.
Goals, glory, and that Ballon d’Or podium
Griezmann’s first league season in Madrid was a statement. Twenty-two league goals, level with Neymar, a Spanish Super Cup in the cabinet, and a run to the Champions League quarter-finals. He did not just slot into Simeone’s side; he turbocharged it.
The following year he went up another level. He was named player of the season in La Liga and finished third in the 2016 Ballon d’Or, behind only Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. Atleti, powered by his goals and work rate, became a machine that could grind anyone down and still find a moment of class in the final third.
That was peak Griezmann: relentless pressing, elastic movement, a forward who could be a 9, a 10, and a winger all in one match. He scored, he created, he harried. Simeone had found the perfect embodiment of his footballing creed.
But the Champions League remained out of reach. That Milan night, that crossbar, that shoot-out defeat. It all hung there, unfinished.
Simeone and Griezmann: a football marriage
There are few modern player-coach partnerships as tightly woven as Diego Simeone and Antoine Griezmann. The Argentinian has been Atlético coach since 2011, present for every chapter of Griezmann’s Rojiblanco story: the first arrival in 2014, the departure to Barcelona in 2019, the controversial return in 2021, initially on loan, and the resurgence that followed.
“I think ultimately he’s given me everything and I’ve given him everything,” Griezmann says. “I enjoy and have enjoyed having him. I know that beyond my career I’ll have a friend in him, a former coach and we’ll always be really close.”
Simeone took the raw, electric forward from Real Sociedad and sharpened him into a complete modern attacker. Later, as the legs inevitably began to slow, he helped Griezmann adapt, dropping into spaces, dictating play, becoming as much a creator as a finisher.
Their partnership has already delivered European silverware – the UEFA Europa League and the UEFA Super Cup in 2018 – but the Champions League remains the one that got away. This season, with time ticking down on their shared story, that absence feels heavier.
Reinvented, but still decisive
Anyone expecting a faded star in these final months has not been watching. Griezmann remains central to Simeone’s plans, particularly in Europe. He has started alongside Julián Álvarez in each of Atleti’s last four Champions League knockout matches, forming a front line that mixes Álvarez’s vertical chaos with Griezmann’s brain and touch.
The assist against Tottenham in the round of 16 said everything about where his game is now. A moment of vision, a disguised pass, timing that shredded the defensive line. No need for stepovers or long sprints. Just clarity.
“I think I prefer a nice assist rather than being just one-on-one with the goalkeeper,” he admits. “I’m more of a one-touch or two-touch player, not very flashy, but I try to create time for my team-mates and surprise the opponent. That’s what happened against Tottenham.”
This is the late-career Griezmann: less explosive, more surgical. Still decisive.
Orlando on the horizon, Arsenal in the way
The move to Orlando City will open a new chapter in a different footballing world. New league, new continent, new rhythm to life. That can wait.
Right now, everything narrows to Arsenal, to a semi-final, to the idea that he might yet walk away from Europe having finally lifted the trophy that has defined so much of his ambition and regret.
Nearly 500 games for Atlético. Over 200 goals. A relationship with a club that he once thought he could never replicate after leaving Real Sociedad, only to find something “way beyond love” in Madrid.
He will say goodbye in the summer. The question is simple, and it will define how his Atleti story is told for decades: does he leave as a club legend with a scar that never quite healed, or as the man who finally dragged Atlético over the line in Europe at the last possible moment?
