A heavily-rotated Atlético de Madrid side nudged past a determined Real Oviedo at Estadio Municipal Carlos Tartiere on Saturday night, when Julián Alvarez’s 94th-minute goal secured a 1-0 win for the visitors — who moved joint-third in LaLiga and won on the road for just the fourth time all season. Let’s take a closer look at how it happened.
The sequence that ended in Alvarez’s goal began with a ball loss and an Oviedo throw-in.
At least, that’s what it should have been.
Playing on the right-hand side,
Álex Baena launches a venomous cross through the box that misses its target Antoine Griezmann. But left-back Julio Díaz hunts it down and takes a clean touch to keep it play before Alvarez makes himself available as a passing option on the edge of the penalty area.
After making 53 appearances for Atlético Madrileño since 2024, the 21-year-old Díaz passed his first test in Primera, against a Real Oviedo side fighting to stay in the division. Drawn into a challenging matchup against Haissem Hassan, Díaz won two fouls against the skillful winger and went on to claim six of 12 ground duels. Despite (maybe because of) his smaller 5’7” stature, Díaz’s pace and agility offered something different from the 6’2” Matteo Ruggeri. Though he suffered 14 ball losses, only four players took more touches than Díaz with 72; he completed 40 of his 47 passes (19/23 in the Oviedo half) and looked assured as a ball-carrier. It was a promising debut.
Alvarez peels away from the penalty area and Díaz finds him before continuing his own run into the box. The action activates Oviedo midfielder Kwasi Sibo, whom Alvarez is able to fend off with good shielding and body control. Alvarez carries the ball across the penalty arc; though Baena is calling for the ball in a tight space, Araña identifies the unmarked Nahuel Molina for a first-time crossing opportunity.
Molina’s cross, ostensibly intended for Griezmann, is short; it glances off of Baena’s right foot. Whereas Molina’s action was not intentional, on closer inspection, Baena’s instinctive decision just to swing the back of his boot onto the ball serves as a cut-back for Alvarez. This “flick” takes Santiago Colombatto — the midfielder tracking Baena — completely out of the play, and it leaves the ball sitting there for Alvarez.
With Alexander Sørloth no longer on the pitch (he was removed after an hour) and the move now a dangerous one, Alvarez attacks the box. He takes up a position near the penalty spot and latches onto the loose ball, drawing Sibo’s attention once more. This time, Alvarez cuts onto his left foot and lashes Atleti’s first shot on target past goalkeeper Aarón Escandell.
Alvarez’s goal, his eighth, marked his first in LaLiga for 119 days — since his penalty kicked off the scoring in a 3-0 win over Sevilla on Nov. 1. It’s only the second league game this season in which Alvarez has scored in open play, and the first time he has scored in a league match away from home since matchday one in August.
It’s a nice moment for Alvarez, whose struggles have become the subject of widespread intrigue and speculation after he notched 29 goals in his debut season at Atlético. It also capped what had been an unimpressive collective performance against Oviedo, the 20th-place side in LaLiga.
Atlético lost the xG battle, 1.10-0.97, and needed Jan Oblak to make six saves against the league’s bottom side. Atleti won just 41 percent of their aerial duels and 45 percent of their ground duels in Asturias; for much of the game, the Colchoneros struggled to break lines or widen the pitch, even after Giuliano Simeone entered on 61 minutes. For 93 minutes and 10 seconds, Escandell did not face a shot on target.
One school of thought says that Barcelona will be rubbing their palms together as they try to erase a 0-4 deficit from the first leg of the Copa del Rey semifinals on Tuesday night. But knowing Simeone’s Atlético, you could also argue that the unocerismo gene has reasserted itself at a crucial time. It’s only Atleti’s fourth 1-0 win in LaLiga this term — for comparison’s sake, in the 2017/18 season, they won by that scoreline 11 times — and the one in which it took the Rojiblancos the longest to score. When Alvarez’s shot found its home behind Escandell on 93:11, it became Atleti’s latest goal in LaLiga since Alexander Sørloth’s 96th-minute winner at Barcelona in December 2024.
Tuesday is the most important day of Atleti’s season to date. Barcelona, comfortable 4-1 winners over Villarreal earlier on Saturday, have been talking about the remontada since full-time of the semifinal first leg. The blaugrana will control proceedings in the second leg. They will play with a lot of intensity, and they probably will score multiple goals.
Dropping an uninspiring performance at Oviedo and following it up by fending off Barça to reach a first Copa del Rey final in 13 years? Well, the script almost writes itself.
