Do they truly believe, over at the Vicente Calderon? Diego Simeone was making all the right noises at the weekend, telling reporters that his Atletico Madrid team could overturn the 3-0 deficit sustained in the first leg of the club's Champions League semi-final against Real Madrid.
"On Wednesday we have a very difficult game," he acknowledged. "Impossible for many, but not for us. Nothing is impossible."
It is his job, as manager, to project confidence even when the odds are stacked against his team. But he was not alone. Supporters did their bit, too, hanging a banner which read “I fight and then I get up again” during their 1-0 win over Eibar. At full-time, a large number stayed behind, calling the players back out from the changing rooms a further round of encouragement and applause.
Faith alone does not win football matches. If there is any hope at all of a turnaround it is strictly because Simeone has built Atletico into one of the best teams on the planet, a side that has played in two of the last three Champions League finals. But that, in itself, might also be a painful thought for fans to bear. It is hard to escape the sense that Atletico is arriving at the end of an era.
Simeone is not expected to stay beyond the end of next season, having negotiated the shortening of his contract last summer. He might even be tempted to depart much sooner, with Inter - a club which he has vowed to manage at some point in his career - offering generous terms to make him Stefano Pioli's successor.
Likewise, Antoine Griezmann's departure is starting to feel inevitable. Where Simeone may yet be persuaded to see out his contract and lead Atletico into its new stadium next season, the striker seems less likely to turn down Manchester United should the €100m release clause in his contract be triggered.
Griezmann has refused to discuss his future with journalists, even walking out of one interview when the subject was raised last month. Previously he had vented his frustrations to AS, saying: "Players like Cristiano, Messi or Bale do not get asked what’s going to happen next year or where they are going to be or where they are going to play. So I don’t like being asked either."
But in that same interview he had spoken about his drive to achieve, saying "I need to win titles and I will do everything possible to make this happen." Having joined Atletico in the summer after the club's 2014 La Liga triumph, he has never collected any more important silverware than that year's Supercopa.
There was a moment in the first leg, shortly after Cristiano Ronaldo had buried Madrid’s third goal, when the cameras cut to Griezmann, his face a picture of resignation. Yet again, he had come within touching distance of Europe's biggest prize of all, and yet again he could feel it being whipped away.
He could not blame himself for this defeat, as he did with last season's final. Griezmann has confessed to barely sleeping for a full week after Atletico lost on penalties to Madrid in Milan, unable to shift the image of the spot-kick he missed in regulation. Even seven months later, he continued to lament to reporters that: "if I had scored, we could have won."
It was a very different story at the Santiago Bernabeu last Tuesday, Griezmann barely getting a sniff of the ball against an opponent that had pulled off the rare feat of outwitting Simeone. Atletico as a team will need to be drastically improved to have even the faintest chance of a comeback. But Griezmann individually will need to be at his very best as well.
Let us be clear: Atletico needs a miracle. When the Spanish newspaper AS put together a slideshow of the club’s previous greatest European comebacks this week, the best they could find was a series of ties where Atleti had lost 2-1 in the first leg.
And none of the opponents were as good as this Madrid team.
In a more tangible sense, though, what the Rojiblancos actually need is a minimum of three goals. Griezmann is not just their leading scorer, but also their leading provider of assists, when you combine La Liga and Champions League. A player who has shown he can deliver on the big occasion - scoring the decisive away goal in last season’s semi-final win over Bayern Munich, as well as both goals in France’s victory over Germany at the equivalent stage Euro 2016.
He is not the man who will inspire his teammates with his words. In another interview from last year he confessed that he has never been one for motivational speeches, saying: "I would like to but it just does not come naturally."
No problem. Simeone is more than capable of doing the talking, as are others such as Diego Godin. But Atletico has only one world class goalscorer in its squad, and might not have him for an awful lot longer. Wednesday’s game is already being billed as Griezmann’s last for Atletico in the Champions League.
But he still has a chance, however slim, to earn himself a final encore.
(Photos courtesy: Reuters)
