Malaga are back in La Liga after eight years, and they open at Atletico Madrid
Eight years after finishing bottom of the table, Malaga return to the Spanish top flight. They begin at the Riyadh Air Metropolitano, against an Atletico side beaten at home three times all of last season.
Aug 19, 2026
Three clubs went down from La Liga in 2018. Deportivo La Coruna, Las Palmas and Malaga. Two of them are in the division again this season, and Malaga got there by knocking out the third.
Their reward is the Riyadh Air Metropolitano on Wednesday night, at 12.30am Thursday in India, against an Atletico Madrid side that lost three home league matches all of last season.
The eight years, and how they ended
Malaga finished bottom of La Liga in 2017-18 with 20 points and five wins from 38, a relegation confirmed by Emmanuel Boateng’s injury-time winner for Levante, and that ended a ten-season stay in the top flight. What followed was worse than the drop itself. They finished third in the second division at the first attempt and lost in the play-offs, and then the club came apart: an owner, Sheikh Abdullah Al Thani, who by 2020 owed it millions, a court-appointed administrator who publicly floated releasing the entire first-team squad, and in May 2023 relegation to the third tier for the first time since 1998.
They came fourth in the second division last season and went into the play-offs, where they beat Las Palmas 2-1 on aggregate in the semi-final, winning 1-0 away and drawing 1-1 at home. The final against Almeria was goalless at La Rosaleda and then settled on 20 June at Almeria, where Chupe and David Larrubia scored and Leo Baptistao pulled one back. It was the second time Malaga had been through the play-offs since going down, and the first time they came out of the right end of them. Juan Francisco Funes is the manager who did it.
Deportivo, relegated in the same season eight years ago, opened their own return on Monday with a 1-1 draw against Elche at Riazor. Racing Santander, the third promoted side, drew 2-2 with Villarreal after leading by two. Neither result suggests the promoted clubs are here to be swept aside, though neither of them drew Atletico first.
Simeone’s sixteenth season starts without his centre-forward
Atletico were fourth last season on 69 points, and the number that should worry Malaga is the home record inside it: fifteen wins, one draw, three defeats from nineteen. Diego Simeone is into his sixteenth season in charge, and five of them have now passed without a trophy, which at most clubs would be a sacking and at this one was a contract extension.
The summer brought Cristian Romero, Alejandro Grimaldo, Morten Hjulmand and Kang-in Lee. It has not brought a fit centre-forward. Alexander Sorloth is out with a muscle problem and Julian Alvarez only got back into training late after the World Cup, which leaves Simeone opening a season with his attack half-assembled and a newly promoted opponent who will sit deep and dare him to break them down.
A history that favours Atletico
The two clubs have met many times down the years, and Atletico have won considerably more often than not. That is roughly what you would expect from a fixture that spent most of its history being played between a Champions League regular and a club whose best years came and went with a Qatari owner who stopped paying for them.
Malaga arrive on the back of a long unbeaten run stretching from the end of last season into pre-season. Atletico won two of their four warm-up games. Those numbers will not survive contact with a real La Liga night, and everyone involved knows it, but they are the only evidence either side has until kick-off.
Malaga will not be judged on this one. Staying in the match past the hour, in a stadium that has beaten far better sides than them, would be enough to make the fixtures that actually decide their season look survivable when they arrive.