Atlético de Madrid will survive Julián Alvarez’s theatrics, a perfected system of non-confrontational, passive-aggressive sulking as he — still! — seeks fruitlessly to join FC Barcelona.
But unless Julián gets his act together and decides to be a footballer again, his career will not survive the damage that has been done to it this summer.
As they have tried and failed to engineer an impossible transfer to Barcelona, Alvarez and his agent Fernando Hidalgo have leaked to friendly media an absurd strategy
to blackmail, disparage and even intimidate Atlético as an institution. Another club would not be so forgiving of this deplorable behavior and would not have called up the player for Sunday’s 2-2 draw against Villarreal, even giving him the option to rot in the stands until his contract expires on June 30, 2030.
I think Julián’s attitude toward Atlético in calendar year 2026 has been indefensible. He has picked which games he wants to play in. He has demanded to leave the club where he signed a long-term contract to be its star player, when the contract is only one-third complete. In my opinion, it is for these reasons that this reluctant star must depart Atlético immediately. He’s disrespected the club and that is not forgivable. The disease he has brought with him must not be allowed to metastasize and threaten the prospects of season 2026/27.
However, Alvarez’s never-ending saga has inflicted necessary growing pains on Atlético, and it could positively mark the club’s future under Apollo Sports Capital. Julián is going to pout, stew and go viral for doing so until he boards a train that will never arrive. His career, whatever he wants to do with it, is a drop in the ocean at a club that’s been around for 123 years.
After all that has transpired this summer, even someone as lost in the clouds as Julián had to know that a humiliation ritual awaited him in his first home match in LaLiga since March 14.
“No mercy,” read the front pages of AS and Marca on Monday.
First, Alvarez was roundly whistled pre-game, when his name was read out among the substitutes. He was seen staring a hole through the ground, folding and laying across his left thigh the “19” shirt that fans purchased in droves when his signing was announced.
As the first half bled into the second, LaLiga’s cameras trained on the Atlético bench repeatedly found a surly, stone-faced Alvarez, sitting quietly and appearing not the slightest bit interested in Atleti’s back-and-forth struggle with Villarreal. Though he didn’t warm up with the first batch of substitutes, Alvarez’s number finally was called in the 66th minute, part of a triple substitution after Gerard Moreno’s equalizing penalty.
Alvarez’s “performance” isn’t really worth discussing, because he did nothing of note. He took 12 touches and he was whistled each time. He attempted one shot that was quickly blocked. The display looked eerily similar to countless “efforts” he put in during the last league season, in which he placed 36th on the scoring chart with eight goals. He makes more than €7 million net per year. He scored one goal more than his salary.
While I would not have whistled at one of my players, I can’t blame the scores of Atleti fans and socios who did serenade Julián in that way. Lest we forget, 62 days ago, this grown man stumbled through a prepared speech at the FIFA World Cup, the most important football competition there is, to publicly request a club transfer. He hoped to bully and scare Atlético into honoring a vague transfer “promise” if his “dream” club lodged a competitive offer. And while he did not name this “dream,” everyone knew where he wanted to go — and in an instant, how he had attempted to use Atlético as a springboard to go there.
Julián’s Atleti career is done. For all intents and purposes. He brought it to an end on June 22. Atleti supporters generally are unforgiving with players who have done what he has attempted to do: even Antoine Griezmann still has his detractors within the fanbase.
“When a player says he’s leaving, it means he’s already gone,” Jorge Valdano said Sunday night on Movistar
Indeed. I cannot imagine having to watch him crawl around the Metropolitano for another nine months.
Yet Atlético continue to protect Señor Soñador in a way that another dreamer, João Félix, never was protected. Doubtlessly, the club has learned from its experience with the Portuguese attacker, who is now the Saudi Pro League’s best player. There’s safeguarding the player’s value, but there’s giving deference to a player who is attempting to hold the club hostage, and I don’t find that appropriate.
Diego Simeone, Mateu Alemany and Miguel Ángel Gil have been remarkably consistent on Alvarez’s future, hoping that his “professionalism” will shine through and this period of being “poorly advised” is just a nightmare from which we will soon awaken. Even Simeone had to backtrack from his comments Wednesday, when he said he “respected the fans” as a small number of them insulted Alvarez during the season-opening win against Málaga.
Take the sequence which occurred immediately after Alejandro Hernández Hernández (so bad they named him twice) blew for full-time. The club’s own press department asked Alvarez not to join his teammates as they saluted the Fondo Sur — the same stand where members of the Frente Atlético had hung “Julián out” placards at Atleti’s suburban training ground earlier in the week.
The club cannot have rules for some but not for others. To tell Alvarez to head straight for the dressing room — ostensibly to shield him from a crowd that has been fed “so many lies” — serves the opposite purpose of rehabilitating Alvarez’s subterranean reputation among the supporters: it makes us think that he doesn’t have the strength of character to face the music.
“When we stick together, we can challenge for big trophies,” Simeone said Sunday night. “We need forwards. The ones we have, we need to take care of them.”
As I’ve written previously, the most logical outcome of this entire dreadful saga is Alvarez — his head obviously elsewhere — stays at the club, given the length of his contract. That does not mean Atleti have to play him. I refer you again to the case of Mariano, who joined Real Madrid on a five-year contract in 2018 and goldbricked it all the way to the end in 2023, making a mere 84 appearances and collecting seven trophies along the way. Julián could just do that and end his career in the United Arab Emirates or something.
But it is not Simeone’s way to exile a player to the stands. As long as Alvarez is on the team, he will work to get the best out of him. “Proud not to be like you” isn’t just a slogan. It has to mean something.
Where Atlético have won this summer is in embracing that image: smashing the pipeline that has long connected it to Barça. Blaugrana “discards” no longer will get a new lease on life at Atleti, and Atleti’s top assets — now and in the future — will know that the Metropolitano is not a pitstop on the road to Camp Nou. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend: selling Julián to Barcelona now for €100 million — for those counting at home, 20 percent of his €500 million release clause — would be one of the greatest embarrassments in the history of professional sports.
Arsenal have wanted to sign Alvarez for more than a year, having first received encouragement to bid for him at the FIFA Club World Cup in 2025. Their €120 million bid then was rejected, but reports generally concur that the Gunners still want to acquire Alvarez and will make a significant financial commitment to him if he decides to slink back to England. A lot of fans would understand a sale to the other major club interested in Alvarez’s services. While there is no evidence that he actually wants to leave Spain, maybe that’s only because no one has directed him to do so yet.
But Atleti don’t give out €500 million release clauses to every player. The club remains committed to Alvarez, even though Alvarez is not committed to the club. And fortunately, Barcelona never have made an offer in line with the player’s market value. As we repeatedly have said, the Catalan club has absolutely zero plans to do so. This is their scumbag strategy, which Nico Williams last year was smart enough to see through.
I wish I could say the same about Julián. The thought of Simeone flushing his twilight years down the drain to support a player with the personality of a pool noodle makes me sick to my stomach.
Even still, Atleti will be just fine. But it should not disrespect its fans by pinning any hopes for 2026/27 on Alvarez. The best thing Atleti can do is minimize the circus that has surrounded this malcontent for the better part of a year and will continue to surround him if he continues to play meaningfully for this club.
Buy a new forward, hope you’ve got it right and move on without number 19 — whether that means reducing his role or even sending him on his way.
What will be, will be. Alvarez can’t hide forever.
