The Europa League returns to the Calderón and with it the great feelings that comes with being reigning champions of the competition. Not surprisingly, a year after Diego Pablo Simeone began his European tour with his adventure as Atletico coach, the club began an impressive streak of wins. Atletico won all the matches in the qualifying stage before beating Athletic in the final at the National Arena in Bucharest (3-0).

That love affair with Atletico and this competition, which has seen the club collect the trophy as champion in two of the last three years, and this year they’ll look to continue with this run in the knockout phase beginning on Valentine’s day.

Atletico Madrid has previously come up against Russian teams starting in 1972 when they played the tie of the second round of the Cup Winners Cup against Spartak Moscow. The Russians won 3-4 in the Calderon and Atletico did the same in the Soviet capital by 1-2. The most recent clash was on October 25th 2007, when Atletico drew (3-3) against Lokomotiv Moscow in the old UEFA Cup.

Falcao returns to the competition in which he is the second-leading scorer. The Colombian is tied with Huntelaar with 30 goals, and both need three goals to reach the top scorer of all time, held by the Swede Henrik Larsson. In addition, the Tiger starts this season in a competition in which he won the last two titles with Porto and Atletico and, to if its repeated this season, he would be the first player to win this competition, with the current name for three consecutive years.

It is the first time that Atletico and Rubin Kazan meet in the tournament. It's a good time to enjoy a good game between two teams that will come together in the Calderon before traveling to Moscow next week, where temperatures will not reach 0 degrees. Therefore, the red and white fans have to lead their team to victory, knowing that under Simeone, Atletico still has not lost any tie in the Europa League or Copa del Rey.