The team that is best at kneecapping Atlético de Madrid’s post-derby momentum is Atlético de Madrid itself.
There can be no other conclusion after Atlético huffed and puffed to a 1-1 draw at Celta Vigo on Sunday night to end round eight of LaLiga still outside of the Champions League places.
Atlético took the lead when center-back Carl Starfelt poked Pablo Barrios’ cross into his own net, but Clément Lenglet was shown a second yellow card for pulling back forward Ferran Jutglà following a ball loss
in the 40th minute. The Rojiblancos went into a defensive shell, trying to protect a 1-0 lead that few if any actually expected them to protect.
In the 68th minute, Jan Oblak saved well from a Borja Iglesias shot, but Iago Aspas was there to tap in the rebound. It wasn’t a surprise — the damage had long been done. Perhaps the only surprise was in Atlético holding on for one point instead of leaving with zero.
During his ill-fated stint as the Fenerbahce manager, Jose Mourinho dropped this banger of a quote about adapting…or dying.
“You have those coaches who try to do things that just don’t work, and because of that they die, but they say ‘I died, but I died by my ideas,’” Mourinho said last year. “My friend, if you died by your ideas, you are stupid.”
That Atlético can’t keep a clean sheet anymore (one in 10 games this season) is anathema to the Atleti DNA as understood through Diego Simeone’s Cholismo, the set of principles that guided this former also-ran into the European elite. I suspect the Cholo Simeone of 2015 would not give his imprimatur to some of the stuff that the Cholo Simeone of 2025 is doing; his ideas have swung drastically, sometimes incomprehensibly, as Atleti have tried to keep up with stronger rivals across recent seasons.
Simeone recognized years ago that football in practice was moving away from the rigid, pragmatic system that saw Atlético upend LaLiga’s duopoly and nearly become European champions twice. Teams have gotten younger, faster, more aggressive; Atlético have been exposed routinely for lacking these qualities.
Enough humbling results at home and abroad (combined with the owners’ eagerness to sell the club) triggered a €364 million expenditure on 14 new players over the past 14 months — including Lenglet. The 30-year-old arrived on an initial loan from FC Barcelona last August and signed a three-year deal in June after securing a contract termination from the Catalan club.
This brings us to Sunday. Selected for a third successive start, Lenglet had deftly toed the line while being booked in thumping home wins over Real Madrid and Eintracht Frankfurt last week. At Balaídos, he saw his first yellow midway through the first half, marking his first incident with former Barcelona teammate Jutglà. Though the Rojiblancos spurned decent chances through Nico Gonzalez and Dávid Hancko to go 2-0 up, Atlético weren’t playing particularly well and were already being pushed back when Lenglet hauled down Jutglà on the halfway line for his second yellow.
In just 43 games for Atlético, Lenglet has given away four penalties and picked up two red cards. That is one or the other every seven games, on average. But even still, the coaching staff curiously continues to insist with Lenglet when the stats say that maybe they shouldn’t.
Simeone has not ceded to those observers (I’m one of them!) calling for Matteo Ruggeri to start at left-back so that Hancko can play in his natural position as a central defender and thus displace the much-maligned Lenglet. We know Simeone can be a stubborn customer who has played favorites over the years, but there is something of a method to his madness with Lenglet. The Frenchman’s strong passing and ball-playing abilities have been key to the “new Atlético”, one that has been playing an unusually-high defensive line (by Atleti standards) and was averaging 60 percent possession entering last week’s Madrid Derby.
This is a major reason why only Hancko (610) and Robin Le Normand (706) have played more minutes in LaLiga than Lenglet (399); meanwhile, Ruggeri (284) has made only three starts despite not really doing anything wrong — or, granted, exceedingly well.
Lenglet’s usage of the ball is essential in a team that features many technical attacking players and must have the majority of possession to exploit those qualities. So each week, Simeone gambles that Lenglet’s carrying and forward passing will outweigh his lack of pure defensive talent, especially his proclivity for pushing the panic button so readily despite boasting nearly 300 games of top-flight experience in France, England, and Spain.
If that sounds vaguely familiar, it is a similar bet to the one Simeone placed on Mario Hermoso throughout the Spaniard’s rollercoaster five-year stint here. After all, Lenglet and Hermoso are almost the same player, just in different fonts.
This is a bet Simeone would have been mortified to place 10 years ago, but football was different then. He was different then. The desire to keep going at Atlético when he could have joined Manchester City or Paris Saint-Germain brought with it a handsome reward: in 2021, while betting on Hermoso, changing formations to accommodate him as well as a 33-year-old Luis Suárez, Atleti won a famous league title — its second during an era in which the duopoly has been more powerful than ever.
But Atlético haven’t won anything since. It’s a big reason why only eight players remain from the 2023/24 squad. This season, Atleti have yet to win away from home and sit fifth in the table; the Rojiblancos are level on points with Sevilla, Elche, and Athletic Club. Catching Barça and/or Real Madrid feels like a pipe dream — and this team hung five goals on Madrid just 10 days ago.
That’s because domestic or continental successes this year are difficult to envision without security in defense — formerly a non-negotiable at Simeone’s Atlético. Lenglet is the biggest gamble in every 11 that El Cholo names, and the coach keeps losing the bet, trusting a player who is well-known by multiple fanbases for crippling positional mistakes that make it easy to forget his virtues in possession.
Maybe Lenglet will improve; maybe he won’t. This Atlético is unpredictable, capable of absolute brilliance as well as complete slapstick. When the trio of Thiago Almada, Álex Baena, and Johnny Cardoso returns to match fitness, we could see a more settled and more consistent team — and these early-season pinchazos will fade somewhat from memory. If Ruggeri and Marc Pubill eventually gain the coach’s trust too, all the better.
Right now though, this team is best understood not through the newest signings, or through its star player Julián Alvarez, but rather through the prism of Chaotic Clément: the tragicomic figure who represents all spectra of the new Atlético de Madrid.
