Girona's La Liga fairy tale continues after thrilling win against Atletico Madrid

There are rarer things in elite football than an Atletico Madrid side under Diego Simeone conceding four goals in a game, but not too many. Scroll through Simone’s back catalogue of 652 matches spent building his monument to tenacity and rugged defensive excellence and you find very few scorelines that heavy.

In Simeone’s 12 years as head coach, there have been four-goal hiccups a couple of times away in Germany, and very occasional leaky nights against Barcelona and Real Madrid, alongside whom Simeone’s great achievement has been to build a lasting competitive parity.

So what happened on Wednesday, at the stadium with the lowest capacity in Spanish football’s top division, was stunning: Girona 4, Atletico Madrid 3.

It’s a statement scoreline, a notice that Girona intend to carry deep into 2024 the fairy tale they have been writing through the last five months. Joint top of La Liga, they are the most eye-catching upstarts in European club football. Girona are also, with a respectful nod to Manchester City – currently only third in the Premier League – the new year front-runners within the global paddock of the Abu Dhabi-backed City Football Group, CFG.

Back when Simeone was first appointed at Atletico, tasked with making a fragile institution into La Liga’s grizzly upstarts, Girona were in Spain’s second division. They spent most of that 2011/12 season in the relegation zone, avoiding the drop to the third tier only late in the campaign.

This is only their fifth season ever in the top flight. Their last promotion was less than two years ago. Yet the win over Atletico, sealed in injury time in front of 14,000 who made enough noise to sound like a crowd double that size, means they now share the leadership in Spain, with