Atlético Madrid squared off against Real Sociedad in a repeat of April’s painful Copa del Rey final. There was always going to be a bit of an edge to this one, especially for the visitors, who arrived off the back of a loss to Athletic Club in the league and another to Liverpool in the Champions League. More dropped points and this side goes into the week four behind Real Madrid and seven behind Barcelona already.
Thankfully that was not the case, though while three goals in the final 10 minutes made
this look routine, it was anything but.
The scoreline is lying to you
Look at the final whistle and this reads like a comfortable away day. It was not.
Atleti finished with 1.92 expected goals. Before Alejandro Grimaldo’s 84th-minute penalty, that number sat at 0.52. Not a single shot on target in the entire first half. For the better part of 80 minutes, this was a team creating almost nothing.
Even the penalty needed some help to arrive. Job Ochieng had the ball clip his thigh, loop up and catch him on the arm, just enough for the referee to point to the spot. It was a fortunate route to the best chance of the entire game, and the first-choice penalty taker on the pitch happened to be Grimaldo. It had been another mixed game for a player who I thought would instantly revamp that left-hand side, but put the ball on the spot in front of him and none of that matters. He stepped up and buried it without a flicker of hesitation, and Real Sociedad simply came apart from there.
Two more followed inside 10 minutes, both on the counter. La Real barely troubled Atleti themselves across the 90, but there is a real argument they deserved better than losing by three. What matters more though is that anyone who has sat through an Atleti performance like this one before knows exactly how it tends to end. A flat 0-0. Maybe a sucker punch the other way that ruins the whole week. Getting out of Anoeta with all three points despite playing like this is a result in itself.
There is also a clean sheet away from home to bank, which after this shaky start to the season is not nothing. This back line is still figuring itself out, there were nervy stretches throughout, but the more minutes these players log next to each other, the more it should settle.
Another glimpse at where Giuliano actually belongs
Diego Simeone was asked this week whether something has to give with his son starting almost every game at right wing-back, a role that simply does not suit him. For most of this match, that question looked entirely fair.
The Rojiblancos could not create a thing out wide all afternoon, and Giuliano’s selection continued to look more and more like an odd fit for it. No real chances created in tight spaces. A handful of misplaced passes. Long stretches where he looked a step off the pace of the game entirely. By the eighties, it felt safe to assume the questions were only going to keep piling on. The numbers back it u, too. Twenty-five of 38 passes completed. A 66 percent completion rate from a wide starting role that created almost nothing. Not a good look.
And then the final five minutes happened.
Giuliano turned into a pure outlet ball, barely needed a second touch, and still found a way to snag a goal on the counter. That, right there, might be the whole answer. Because it is becoming increasingly obvious that Giuliano’s game is built for something a good deal more advanced than right wing-back. He is, at his best: the less he has to think, the fewer touches he needs, the fewer decisions the ball demands of him. The deeper he gets pulled into buildup, the harder it becomes for him to stay on the same wavelength as far more technical teammates like Lee Kang-in or Pablo Barrios. None of that makes him a bad player. Far from it. It just means somebody (his own dad) has him doing a job that is not really his.
Here is hoping Cholo finally looks at that goal as the blueprint it should be. This side would likely be better served reinventing Giuliano as a forward option in transition — thrown at tired legs late on, pure outlet, pure running in behind. His finishing has been patchy at times, but it is worth remembering he actually started out as a striker. Get him into these situations consistently, sharpen up the conversion rate, and there is a real goal threat hiding in there for Atleti this season.
Injuries already, and a lean forward room
Atleti walked into this game already missing Pablo Barrios and Julián Alvarez, both out injured. Both absences hurt in very different ways.
Barrios, for the second season running, looked like he was building toward the kind of year that finally drags him out of the promising youngster conversation and into the discussion of the best midfielders on the planet. He looked completely unbothered under pressure, and Atleti as a whole looked sharper, slicing through opposition presses like a hot knife through butter, almost entirely off the strength of his understanding with Kang-in. His absence was felt immediately here. Marcos Llorente and Morten Hjulmand did their best to fill the gap, but without Barrios dropping in to help carry the ball forward, Atleti simply could not hold territory or push Real Sociedad back toward their own goal the way they can with him on the pitch.
Alvarez’s absence is a different problem entirely. Whatever he has or has not contributed amid all the noise around him this summer, losing him to injury still leaves the forward room looking a lot thinner. Atleti effectively went into this game with Ademola Lookman as the only recognized forward on the pitch, Baena and Kang-in playing more as creators feeding into him than attackers in their own right. Look at the bench beyond that and, outside of Jonathan David and maybe Arnau Ortiz, there was genuinely nothing else to turn to. David at least made an encouraging start to his league account, coming off the bench and scoring, but even that cameo suggested a more dynamic type of forward — someone who thrives in space and running in behind, rather than a physical presence you can plant in the box and build around.
That is exactly the piece Atleti are missing every single week Alexander Sørloth stays out. It is not just about having a target to aim crosses at. It is about having somebody who pins center-backs to their own goal line and buys the creative players around him the time and space they otherwise do not get. Even Sunday, Lookman kept having to drift wide or drop deep just to manufacture isolated one-on-ones, and he is rarely at his best doing that compared to when he gets to play as an out-and-out winger. When Alvarez is fit and playing, most of his involvement happens deeper too, rather than in and around the box where he actually does damage. Whether Jonathan David can eventually change that picture remains to be seen. One cameo goal does not settle much either way, though it does buy a week’s worth of relief with a striker finding the net.
The bigger issue is what this says about the summer. Atleti clearly needed a target forward, failed to land one, and are now without a fit senior striker of the exact profile that they need. There will be games where that weakness gets papered over, particularly the transitional, counter-heavy ones. But this now makes two matches in a week, away at Liverpool and away here Sunday, where Atleti started brightly, pushed the opponent back and looked like they wanted to play on the front foot away from home, only to run out of a genuine presence up top to actually finish the job.
Can this Atleti side really lean on a killer transitional style for an entire season? Maybe, in patches. There will be good days sprinkled through it. But posing a consistent, sustained threat is a different question entirely, and right now it is one without an answer. A lot needs to click and fast, heading into a derby week before a long international break.
For today though, three goals, a clean sheet, and three points is enough. Take the relief where you can find it.
