Atletico won the Spanish Cup in Simeone’s first full season, 2012/13 and the Spanish League the following season 2013/14. They hadn’t won anything over the next 7 seasons until yesterday but they finished in the Top 3 every season.
There’s a Big 2 in Spain, but Atletico are a fairly distant 3rd big beast as well, ahead of everyone else. Atletico operate in a vacuum where they’re pretty much guaranteed European Cup football every season, they’re not expected to finish ahead of the Big 2 and when they do, it’s a bonus.
They nearly threw away the league this season and would have done so if they’d conceded a late equaliser yesterday. It was shaping up to be a right Spursy collapse. Two thirds of the way, 25 games in, they had a double digits point lead, then only won 3 of next 10 in what was looking like a full scale collapse but won their last 3. Elche missed a last minute penalty for an equaliser against them a few games from the end, which was the final turning point really.