Match day 38 – Atlético de Madrid Champions

About the Drawing

The final day of the 2020–21 La Liga season promised an afternoon of drama. Fourteen teams played simultaneously across seven stadiums, with the league title still to be decided. Every goal had the potential to change the destination of the championship.

I made this drawing from a hotel room in Bilbao. A group of friends and I had travelled there after months of COVID restrictions, grateful simply to be away from Madrid for a few days. They headed to the Guggenheim Museum, while I stayed behind with my drawing board, a radio and the morning sports newspapers.

Preparing for the drawing took almost as much concentration as making it. With seven matches unfolding at once, I relied on the newspapers to keep track of where every team and player was before kick-off. Once Tiempo de Juego began, there was little time to think. The commentary moved constantly between stadiums as goals went in and the title race shifted from one moment to the next.

Looking back, the drawing brings back that afternoon in Bilbao as much as the football itself. It also belongs to a period that now feels part of football's recent history, when the game—and everyday life—was beginning to emerge from the long months of the pandemic. For me, it remains a record of both Atlético de Madrid's title-winning season and a memorable weekend with friends.