Match day: getting to the Bernabéu or the Metropolitano

A match at the Bernabéu or the Metropolitano moves between sixty and eighty thousand people. Getting there is easy: everyone arrives at their own pace, spread across an hour or more, with time for a beer beforehand.

Getting out is a different story. Eighty thousand people decide to leave at once, inside the same fifteen minutes, and that is where a good night turns into an hour standing on a platform.

The good news is that this gets solved before you leave the house.

What we do on a match day

The way there is simple. We pick you up at your address and drop you as close as the night’s road closures allow. There are closures around both stadiums from a couple of hours before, so the last stretch is always walked. It is not that the driver would rather not get closer — the street is physically shut.

The way back is where it is won. We agree a pickup point with you outside the funnel — a street with normal traffic, a few minutes’ walk — and a time. The car is there. Nothing to find, no hand to raise, no watching an app climb while it rains.

That ten-minute walk to the agreed point is usually the fastest part of the whole evening, and certainly nicer than the queue at the metro gate.

Book both, and fix the price if you like

The natural thing here is to book the outward and the return together. It is what almost everyone going to football with us does, because getting there was never the problem.

And if you would rather not think about the meter at all, we can agree a fixed price in advance for the whole thing. You know what you are paying before you get in, and the post-match traffic stops being your concern.

Worth saying too: what waits for you is a high-end car with a professional driver, not whatever vehicle happened to be next in the rank. After ninety minutes standing in the cold, you notice.

Two things to check before you go

Confirm the stadium. Real Madrid play at the Santiago Bernabéu, in the north, on the Castellana. Atlético play at the Riyadh Air Metropolitano, in the east, a long way from it. On a normal day, mixing them up is an annoyance. On a match day, with closures and traffic, it is a serious problem.

Confirm the time. LaLiga schedules matches at varying hours, including nine in the evening on a Monday, and sometimes moves them with only a few weeks’ notice. Check the week before.

If you are visiting and not sure which is which, message us the team name and we will tell you.

And if the match runs long?

Extra time, penalties, a celebration that stretches. It happens.

Message us on WhatsApp and we move the pickup. It is a message, not an ordeal — which is rather the point of having the car booked.