Atletico Madrid Trivia
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50 free Atletico Madrid trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Atlético Madrid began in 1903 as a Madrid branch of Athletic Bilbao, founded by three Basque students, and has spent more than a century as the city's rebellious second club, the Colchoneros whose stripes supposedly came from mattress ticking. This 50-question quiz covers the whole story: the Aviación merger and the first titles under Ricardo Zamora, Helenio Herrera's double, the 1962 Cup Winners' Cup, the heartbreaking 1974 European Cup final, Luis Aragonés's four spells, Jesús Gil's chaotic reign, the 1996 double, the Torres years and relegation, and Diego Simeone's revolution with Europa League wins, two league titles and two Champions League finals. There are questions on the Metropolitano, the nicknames, the badge, the Columbia Pictures shirts, the Madrid derby, the club's ownership twists and its records. Fifty questions, four options each, with a short explanation after every answer. Play on your phone, share your score, or print it for a quiz night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Atlético Madrid was founded in 1903 as a branch of which other Spanish club?
Athletic Bilbao
Athletic Bilbao. Basque students living in Madrid set up the branch within weeks of watching their home club win the first Copa del Rey final in the city, and the two sides only split in 1921.
Q 02At which Madrid fountain do Atlético fans gather to celebrate trophies, a short walk from Real Madrid's Cibeles?
Neptune
Neptune. The sea god stands less than a mile from Cibeles on the same boulevard, and after the 2014 league title a vast crowd packed the square to meet the team's open-top bus.
Q 03What colours did Atlético Madrid originally play in?
Blue and white halves
Blue and white halves. The design was Blackburn Rovers', whose shirts the parent club's founders used to buy on trips to England, and it lasted until the switch to stripes around 1911.
Q 04Atlético Madrid's nickname Los Colchoneros refers to which trade?
Mattress makers
Mattress makers. Spanish mattresses used to be covered in red-and-white striped ticking just like the team's shirts, and the story goes that cheap offcuts of the cloth were sewn into kits.
Q 05Tradition says Juan Elorduy bought Atlético's first red and white striped shirts from which English club?
Southampton
Southampton. The story goes that he was sent for Blackburn Rovers kits, found none and bought striped shirts in the port he sailed home from; a 2023 study argues they really came from Sunderland.
Q 06When Atlético Madrid first adopted red and white striped shirts, which part of their old kit did they keep?
Blue shorts
Blue shorts. The parent club that made the same switch moved to black shorts, so the blue became the one thing that set the Madrid side's kit apart, and it has stayed for over a century.
Q 07By which nickname is Atlético Madrid's long-serving coach Diego Simeone known?
El Cholo
El Cholo. A youth coach, Victorio Spinetto, gave him the name as a teenager because it had belonged to Carmelo Simeone, an unrelated Boca Juniors defender of an earlier generation, and it stuck.
Q 08After the Spanish Civil War, Atlético Madrid merged with which other team?
Aviación Nacional
Aviación Nacional. The air force side, founded by officers during the war, had been refused a top-flight place, while the Madrid club had lost players and a usable ground, so the merger rescued both.
Q 09Who managed Atlético Madrid to the club's first La Liga title in 1939–40?
Ricardo Zamora
Ricardo Zamora. Spain's great goalkeeper of the 1920s, after whom La Liga's goalkeeping award is named, won the league in his first season as the club's coach and kept it in 1941.
Q 10Why did Atlético Madrid switch its name to a Spanish spelling in 1940?
A Franco decree banned foreign names
A Franco decree banned foreign names. Every club had to drop its English words; when the ban was lifted decades later most took their old names back, but Atlético chose to keep the Spanish form.
Q 11Which coach led Atlético Madrid to back-to-back league titles in 1950 and 1951?
Helenio Herrera
Helenio Herrera. A decade before he made catenaccio famous in Italy, he won those titles with Larbi Benbarek starring in attack, and the club then waited 15 years for its next league crown.
Q 12Atlético Madrid won the 1962 Cup Winners' Cup final against which Italian club?
Fiorentina
Fiorentina. The holders drew 1–1 in Glasgow, the replay in Stuttgart had to wait almost four months, and Atlético's 3–0 win there brought a trophy that Real Madrid never managed to win.
Q 13Which English club beat holders Atlético Madrid 5–1 in the 1963 Cup Winners' Cup final?
Tottenham Hotspur
Q 21Atlético Madrid lost the 1986 Cup Winners' Cup final 3–0 to which club?
Dynamo Kyiv
Dynamo Kyiv. Valeriy Lobanovskyi's side scored after five minutes and twice more in the last five in Lyon, leaving Atlético beaten in a third European final in a row.
Q 22Which controversial businessman became Atlético Madrid's president in 1987 and stayed for 16 years?
Jesús Gil
Jesús Gil. The property magnate, later mayor of Marbella, hired and fired coaches at a furious rate, and when the club became a company in 1992 he took its shares without paying for them.
Q 23Which future Real Madrid star left Atlético's academy when the club shut it down in 1992?
Raúl
Tottenham Hotspur. Jimmy Greaves and Terry Dyson scored twice each in Rotterdam, and the win made Spurs the first British club to lift a European trophy.
Q 14Which stadium on the banks of the Manzanares was Atlético Madrid's home from 1966 to 2017?
Vicente Calderón
Vicente Calderón. It opened as the Estadio del Manzanares and was renamed after the club president a few years later; a stretch of the M-30 motorway ran underneath its main stand.
Q 15Which Atlético goalkeeper won La Liga's award for the best goals-against record four seasons running from 2016?
Jan Oblak
Jan Oblak. Bought for a La Liga record fee for a goalkeeper to replace a loanee the club could not keep, he had won the award six times by 2025, more than any keeper before him.
Q 16Atlético had three players sent off in the 1974 European Cup semi-final against which club?
Celtic
Celtic. Coach Juan Carlos Lorenzo's side held out for 0–0 with eight men on a night still remembered in Madrid as the Battle of Glasgow, then won the return leg 2–0 to reach the final.
Q 17Whose last-minute equaliser for Bayern Munich forced a replay of the 1974 European Cup final against Atlético?
Georg Schwarzenbeck
Georg Schwarzenbeck. The centre-back rarely shot and a team-mate recalls silently begging him not to, but his long-range strike cancelled out an extra-time free kick, and Bayern won the replay 4–0.
Q 18Why did Atlético Madrid play in the 1974 Intercontinental Cup despite losing the European Cup final?
Bayern declined to take part
Bayern declined to take part. They pleaded fixture congestion, so the runners-up went instead, beat Independiente 2–1 on aggregate and became world champions without ever having been champions of Europe.
Q 19Which Atlético Madrid great returned as coach in 2001 and won promotion from the second division?
Luis Aragonés
Luis Aragonés. He had first taken the job in 1974, within months of retiring as the club's star forward, and after winning promotion he handed a teenage Fernando Torres his La Liga debut.
Q 20Which striker won the Pichichi with Atlético Madrid in 1985, then crossed the city to join Real Madrid?
Hugo Sánchez
Hugo Sánchez. The Mexican scored both goals in that year's cup final, and at Real he was La Liga's top scorer again in each of his first three seasons, four Pichichis in a row.
Raúl. The president scrapped the youth system to save money, so the teenager crossed the city and found worldwide fame with Atlético's greatest rivals instead.
Q 24Which Portuguese winger, fresh from winning the 1987 European Cup with Porto, became Atlético Madrid's marquee signing?
Paulo Futre
Paulo Futre. The new president made the 21-year-old, man of the match in that final, his very first signing, yet years of lavish spending on stars brought only two Copas del Rey.
Q 25Which coach delivered Atlético Madrid's La Liga and Copa del Rey double in 1995–96?
Radomir Antić
Radomir Antić. Atlético had escaped relegation only on the final day of the previous season; the Serbian arrived, cleared out the squad and won both trophies at the first attempt.
Q 26Which club knocked Atlético Madrid out of their first Champions League campaign, in the 1996–97 quarter-finals?
Ajax
Ajax. Atlético drew 1–1 in Amsterdam and took the Dutch side to extra time in Madrid, but lost 3–2 there, ending the Spanish champions' first campaign under the Champions League name.
Q 27In which city did Atlético and Real Madrid meet in the first all-Madrid Champions League final, in 2014?
Lisbon
Lisbon. Atlético led until the 93rd minute at the Estádio da Luz and stood moments from a first European Cup, only to be taken to extra time and beaten 4–1.
Q 28Which country sponsored Atlético Madrid's shirts from 2012 to 2014 under the slogan 'Land of Fire'?
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan. Atlético made no secret of the politics: the club said the deal was meant to 'promote the image' of the country and carry its name 'all over the world'.
Q 29Fernando Torres left Atlético Madrid in July 2007 for which English club?
Liverpool
Liverpool. He had joined Atlético at 11, was captain at 19 and its leading scorer year after year, and he told the club to listen to the offer because that was where he wanted to play.
Q 30Which film studio sponsored Atlético Madrid's shirts from 2003 to 2005, printing film titles in place of its logo?
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures. Titles such as Spider-Man 2 and Hitch replaced one another on the shirt with each release, and the films' stars, Tobey Maguire and Will Smith among them, posed with it.