Atlético de Madrid on Sunday made the short trek to Vallecas Butarque to face Rayo Vallecano in a city derby, which saw a heavily-rotated Atlético side were humbled in a 3-0 loss to relegation-threatened Rayo.
Fran Pérez swept home the opener five minutes before halftime before Clément Lenglet gave away possession in the buildup to Óscar Valentín’s tap-in on 45 minutes. With 15 minutes to go, Nobel Mendy got the better of Marcos Llorente and headed home from a corner at Jan Oblak’s near post to complete
the surprising beatdown.
Full credit to Rayo for a big win — their first over Atlético in 13 years — that could save their season. Atlético paid the price for rotating too much and playing with too little urgency.
Let’s look at a few other takeaways.
This is embarrassing for LaLiga
For no reason in particular, I kept recalling Santi Cazorla’s “LaLiga is light years behind the Premier League” post on Twitter from a week ago while watching this game. Surely it isn’t because, in their zeal to avoid postponing this match, Javier Tebas and LaLiga have diluted their product and harmed it further, at a point in time where the league is at its weakest general level in years?
This derby literally was held in a Segunda venue. If Leganés weren’t away at Cordóba this weekend, what would have happened? Getafe played Saturday, so the Coliseum wasn’t an option. There were discussions about holding the match at the Metropolitano, but Rayo would have protested given it would have functioned as an Atleti home game. Even after Rayo-Real Oviedo last week was pushed back at the last minute due to problems with the newly-installed Vallecas pitch, was it really so important to have this game now — for Atleti, only 68 hours after the Copa del Rey semifinal first leg — instead of in April?
I say that because no one was convinced by the prospect of going to Butarque. The Bukaneros, Rayo’s ultras, refused to attend and discouraged other Rayo fans from doing so. And less than three full days after 69,000 fans at the Metropolitano roared on Atleti in their 4-0 win over Barcelona, the rotated Rojiblancos played in a sleepy, quiet atmosphere in front of 5,335 attendees. Talk about “jarring.”
None of this is proper for a match in LaLiga, which is supposed to be one of the world’s foremost football leagues. Between the dithering over where — and whether — to hold the game, longstanding delays in announcing fixture times and financial regulations strangling most clubs, it gives the impression that the league is being amateurishly administered. Ask yourself: if the stakes were really so high, if the competition was really “heating up,” wouldn’t Diego Simeone have felt incentivized to name a strong lineup instead of…this nonsense?
The value of a heavy loss
That said, if you’re going to seek out something instructive from this result, look no further than the fact that Mateu Alemany watched this “performance” firsthand.
It should give Alemany a clear understanding — if he didn’t have it already — of which players can stay next season and which ones need to leave. Simeone did much of the sporting director’s work for him in naming this particular lineup:
Sunday’s entire starting defense could leave. It is clear that Clément Lenglet (obviously) and Josema Giménez (sadly) do not have the level to play for Atlético de Madrid; it is no coincidence that once Dávid Hancko and Marc Pubill emerged as a strong pairing, those two players vanished from sight. Without Ademola Lookman in front of him, Matteo Ruggeri is extremely average, and Andrei Rațiu turned him into a pretzel on the move for the opening goal. Nahuel Molina has a year left on his contract and now holds a European Union passport, making it easier to sell him and bring a more consistent option at right back.
Thiago Almada on Sunday buzzed aplenty and created a handful of chances, but he is a squad player, not a starter for a team that wants to be among the 8-16 best sides in Europe. Nico Gonzalez took an amazing 13 touches in the Rayo box and slowed down every move that involved him. I’ve been a Nico apologist but I repeat: under no circumstances can Atleti buy this player from Juventus for €32 million.
Alexander Sørloth was completely anonymous over 90 minutes and gave the impression that he couldn’t care less. It took me a few minutes before I realized Johnny Cardoso had been substituted, so muted was his contribution. I know Robin Le Normand played because he gave away the corner for Mendy’s goal.
It is not acceptable to be this far off the pace in LaLiga, 15 points behind leaders Real Madrid, with three months to go. That factor, more than any other, should prompt departures for another 8-10 players next summer, when Alemany begins constructing a new Atlético under Apollo Sports Capital’s watch.
It’s time to talk about Oblak
Speaking of possible departures, we’re going to have to have a tough conversation about Oblak.
Though he was hardly the worst player on the Butarque pitch, the third goal did sneak past Oblak at his near post. Even with a couple good saves in the first half, the longtime Slovenia star did little here to shake off the perception that he is in decline, even after last season’s historic sixth Zamora Trophy.
Even though he has the capacity to pull off a stop like this every so often, statistically Oblak has been an average shot-stopper for some time — a trend that has continued into this season — and his distribution never has been a strong point. Now 33, Oblak has long been the squad’s top earner, and his unwillingness to agree to a salary reduction — something Koke and Antoine Griezmann have done multiple times — has irked the club for years.
So Oblak no longer prevents goals at an elite rate, his spotty ball-playing remains that and he makes €20 million gross per year. But on top of that, Atlético’s vice captain got in front of DAZN’s cameras on Sunday and publicly put his teammates on blast for losing to Rayo in comments that got a negative response from Cholo Simeone.
“I don’t agree with what Oblak said,” Simeone remarked in his presser. “The team doesn’t choose games to play.”
It is startling how much better Atlético have looked in recent weeks with Juan Musso in goal for the Copa del Rey games instead of Oblak. Musso’s catalog of saves is impressive in its own right, and he has shipped just two goals in four cup games. His accurate long distribution gives Atleti another weapon out of defense and directly keyed the team’s second goal against Barcelona on Thursday.
There is no doubting that Jan Oblak is an Atlético de Madrid legend, and he is arguably the greatest goalkeeper ever to play in LaLiga. But I think it will suit all parties to separate when the season ends.
