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Facet LoweSpain author
Luis Suarez did not wait, and he did not look again. On the finish of Atletico Madrid’s go to to Elche on Wednesday night time, he headed straight down the tunnel, nonetheless irritated that the purpose he’d scored was dominated out. He had felt like he wanted it — a bit vindication on the shut of a troublesome season, a reminder that he was nonetheless right here. He had began simply one of many previous 5 video games, and his final purpose was in opposition to Alaves seven matches in the past. In latest weeks, he has not often bought off the bench. This yr he has scored half as many as he did final season, when he led Atletico to the LaLiga title.
He’s nonetheless his high scorer.
Suarez has 11 league targets, the identical quantity as Angel Correa, who someway by no means actually feels like a starter. Matheus Cunha, signed in the summertime, has six. Joao Felix — who, at a switch charge of €126 million, is the most costly participant in membership historical past, and the person coach Diego Simeone says he’ll carry on even when Joao retains getting indignant with him within the hope that at some point he’ll put it collectively — was out injured. He has eight. Marcos Llorente, scorer of 12 league targets final season, in double figures for each targets and assists, would not have any in any respect.
Antoine Griezmann, house once more after strolling out to hitch Barcelona a yr later than he had initially thought, hasn’t scored since January, when he discovered the web in opposition to third-tier Rayo Majadahonda within the Copa del Rey. “It is my fault, I settle for that,” Griezmann stated. “The targets will return.” They’ll should. In his final spell at Atletico, he scored 25, 32, 26, 29 and 21. He now has eight. He hasn’t bought any in LaLiga in 2022, racking up a complete of three league targets all season.
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The summer season’s different huge signing, midfielder Rodrigo De Paul, did rating on Wednesday. It was his second purpose, and although he is not there for that — regardless of the very fact he bought 9, seven and 9 in his final three seasons in Italy — he hasn’t discovered a pure place but.
And but this season Atletico have truly scored extra targets than final yr. “Unimaginable,” Simeone referred to as it, and it’s in probably the most literal sense: Watching them, it is exhausting to imagine. It is the sort of statistic that had you checking the numbers as a result of it would not appear to make sense; it would not tally with the attention check. And you then see that they’ve additionally conceded extra. Lots, lot extra. They’ve allowed 41 targets in opposition to, in comparison with 25 final season. It is their worst determine up to now decade.
Per week in the past, everybody was banging on about Atletico Madrid doing a guard of honor for Actual Madrid, the not too long ago topped league champions, as custom suggests. The controversy turned tiresome and affected, as these items are likely to, and in the long run Atletico didn’t stand there and utilized Actual Madrid onto the pitch, asserting prematurely they weren’t going to take part in what they stated had grow to be a pantomime.
As a substitute, they simply performed. They beat Actual Madrid 1-0, too, though the grins and the jokes and the beginning XI — no Thibaut Courtois, Karim Benzema, Luka Modric or Vinicius Junior — underlined that, for his or her neighbors a minimum of, it did not matter a lot.
For Atletico, it mattered loads, simply not for the rationale it may need performed. Ought to have performed, maybe.
It was the primary derby that they had gained in eight tries, and the primary ever on the Metropolitano; their final win, in 2015, had been on the Vicente Calderon. A run damaged finally. However this might have been a title decider, and it wasn’t. Atletico Madrid versus Actual Madrid with 4 video games to go. By no means thoughts whether or not you truly do the pasillo, an even bigger difficulty is that reality that you simply’re ready the place you could be anticipated to, the league title race misplaced 5 weeks earlier than the top.
Atletico have been at all times the group that would defend, however they may not defend their league title. It is exhausting to recollect a title protection so poor, the truth is. It was over nearly earlier than it was performed, a part of their drawback.
Even after they have been high after six weeks, Simeone admitted “we’re not the place we wish to be.” One thing was not proper, one thing had shifted. “We’d like a change of angle,” Mario Hermoso stated, and that was after a victory. “Everybody needs to win, to elevate trophies, however for that to occur there are a great deal of issues that should occur first. Preparation, coaching, angle — that is the muse on which success is constructed,” he admitted. Take a look at their outcomes in opposition to the underside three alone: 14 factors dropped, sufficient to place them high.
Later within the season Jose Gimenez would admit that “if you win the league, plenty of groups calm down as a result of they are saying, ‘Properly, it is occurred.'” Simeone stated: “For a group like Atletico, it isn’t straightforward to be champions; it is a membership not used to being champions yearly.” Per week in the past, Jan Oblak stated he did not perceive what was occurring to them, the place their heads have been, “as a result of it is definitely not on the pitch.” On Wednesday night time there was a “dialogue” between him and Renan Lodi.
By the point the derby got here round, the league was lengthy, lengthy gone. It had definitively slipped them by in December, after they misplaced 4 in a row. Now they’re 14 factors behind Actual Madrid, having performed a recreation extra.
In the summertime, when Simeone was making an attempt to steer Griezmann to return house, he recommended that with him, Suarez and Felix, this group might even win the Champions League. As a substitute, they have been knocked out within the quarterfinals. They took Manchester Metropolis to the road, may need gained it and doubtless ought to have, however they have been knocked out once more. The concept they have been unfortunate is undermined by this straightforward reality: They did not win a single recreation at house within the competitors. Within the Copa del Rey, they have been knocked out by Actual Sociedad 4-0.
“All kinds of issues occur in a season,” Griezmann stated on Wednesday. Atletico’s strongest-ever squad (or so everybody thought) didn’t compete because it ought to. There was a way of misplaced identification all yr, a recurring theme going again a while now. That they had a group that modified weekly. There have been accidents, too — Stefan Savic and Gimenez particularly — and departures. Kieran Trippier left; Daniel Wass, who was signed to exchange him, has performed simply 45 minutes. Nothing was ever actually proper.
Simeone admitted that he had discovered himself ready that he had by no means skilled earlier than in 10½ years on the membership. This was “for certain our hardest season,” he stated. Some issues, although, don’t change. In Atletico Madrid’s worst marketing campaign, on Wednesday they secured Champions League soccer for subsequent yr. And when you’re saying, “so what?” you’d be proper to. So they need to do. Simply take a look at the squad, take a look at what it price to assemble. That is the least you possibly can count on. Properly, it’s now, and that is the purpose. With Simeone, this has grow to be customary, a minimal requirement, the coach partially a sufferer of his personal success, which turns into self-perpetuating. And which completely have to be sustained.
After Atletico have been crushed by Levante, Simeone had a gathering with the membership’s CEO Miguel Angel Gil Marin and the sporting director Andrea Berta. That was adopted by a gathering with the taking part in workers, through which they have been handed a stark message: if you don’t attain the Champions League, it is your contracts which can be in danger. We won’t be able to pay you. Atletico gained the subsequent six video games, earlier than that second loss to Mallorca. Champions League qualification was essential to continue to grow and simply to maintain their gamers; that they had budgeted for it. It turns into mutually dependent, a circle: soccer success prompts development in any respect ranges, which permits for extra soccer success, which permits for … and so forth.
It wasn’t at all times so, and there must be a place to begin.
“After I got here, they requested for 4 or 5 Champions League {qualifications},” Simeone stated. It was wanted to construct, to consolidate and to compete. Neglect 4 or 5: subsequent yr it is going to be 10 in a row. Each single full season through which Simeone has been there, a routine, a fundamental customary fabricated from one thing that was not a certainty, that again then was celebrated as successful. On his four-hundredth league recreation as Atletico Madrid coach — seven off the membership file — his group certified for the competitors for a tenth consecutive season. He and Luis Aragones have taken cost for 807 of two,802 Atletico video games within the first division between them; the opposite coaches common 32 every.
That is 10/10 for Simeone, 3/35 within the interval earlier than him. It’s 10 top-three finishes in a row, in comparison with none within the earlier sixteen seasons, one within the earlier 20.
Of their worst yr, they did one thing they’d have celebrated as soon as, one thing that may simply have others pondering: “not them once more,” however they don’t seem to be going away. There was a second seven or eight years in the past, after a recreation at Atletico’s outdated Calderon stadium — gone now, razed to rubble to go away a motorway operating proper via the center of the pitch — when a defeated coach from one other certainly one of Europe’s largest golf equipment got here via and gestured in the direction of the pitch. “What a horrible group, that lot,” he stated, and now they’re again.
