A place for unusual

It tends to neglect some tournaments placing an unfair balance where a plate is placed in another league and cup in the Champions League first and the second the Europa League. It has a Cup and the Champions League as smaller tournaments, small boats compared to large cruise ships that nobody chooses to spend the holidays. Unless isolated and honorable exceptions, league or tournaments like the Champions League seem reserved for the usual suspects in an endless battle to gain numbers and enlarge windows in the trophy room. However, those tournaments that do not interest scorned may be the reason for greater joy for a fan of a set that is not accustomed to lifting titles, as much or even more of that did you. Being asked today to a fan of Athletic Bilbao and Atletico Madrid.

Athletic and Atletico face tonight in Bucharest in the Champions League final for a place in a glory that are not used to achieve, at least not in recent times. Previously, both teams winning leagues and cups rojiblancos more or less frequently, but in the last two decades appears to have mitigated success due to duopoly or other teams like Valencia, Sevilla and Deportivo have collected the titles that were left Madrid and Barcelona by the way. So this final is special, because today Atletico Madrid and Athletic Club will return back to the top.

For Atletico, Europe has been in recent years an escape from the routine league every weekend, where Atletico you have not exercised as the third club in Spain was not so long ago. Good amateur athlete knows that does not pay, he would rather see again a team to come over regularly to the noble positions in the league as they once Garate, Pereira, Luis Aragones, Futre or Kiko Narvaez. But that does not prevent anyone supposed to enjoy as they did when Atletico Aguero and Forlan beat Fulham in that final in Hamburg or infringed months after the defeat to Inter in the Super Cup. And is that Atletico has made his private oasis Europa League.

Meanwhile, Athletic has lived every round as a separate title. Since that cold afternoon in Moscow to San Mamés comeback against Sporting Lisbon happening, of course, the unforgettable victory at Old Trafford or the lion's roar against Schalke in Gelsenkirchen Raul. This Europa League, together with the end of which was always his tournament, the Cup, makes the Athletic Marcelo Bielsa, Llorente, Javi Martinez, Muniain, Susaeta, De Herrera Marcos or join a quality not recalled in The Cathedral, occupies a place of honor in the history of the club. Sometimes it's hard not to be confused with Athletic Bilbao, the city with the club, a city with flags on their balconies and shields in their establishments in every corner of the streets, giving good indication of what is living right now Bilbao swollen.

The Cups UEFA won by Valencia and Seville, the magnificent end of Alaves against Liverpool, the Espanyol against Sevilla in 2007 and the semifinals of Tenerife in 1997. And Cups won by Espanyol, Mallorca, Betis and Zaragoza, or end reached by Getafe, Osasuna and Recreativo de Huelva, and what about outgunned as the Mirandés or Figueres. They have the luster of the Champions League or the prestige of a league, but they are memorable for their hobbies and presents a unique opportunity to be great for a day. So long live the Champions League and Copa del Rey.

In NDF | The Europa League 2011-2012
Photo | UEFA.com