The FIFA World Cup is over, and to some, that may feel like returning to work after a five-week holiday.
For the players of Atlético de Madrid, it means switching focuses toward the rapidly advancing start of next season.
Some of Diego Simeone’s squad have been in training throughout the World Cup, with those who competed in North America slowly trickling their way back to Madrid.
The first real signs of the 2026/27 version of Atleti will be seen in the four upcoming friendlies. A behind-closed-doors
match against Getafe CF opens proceedings on July 29, before a Manchester double-header at the beginning of August: a trip to Stockholm, Sweden to play United on Aug. 1 comes before a visit to Seoul, South Korea to play City on Aug. 9. Lastly, Atleti will travel to the south of France to taken on Marseille on Aug. 14, just five days before their first match in LALIGA.
In the sessions completed over the past few weeks in the Cerro de Espino training ground and the usual ‘retreat’ of San Rafael de Los Ángeles, we have seen some of the early clues as to how El Cholo and new assistant coach Gabi Fernández are thinking ahead of the new campaign.
But bearing in mind that there is less than a month until Atlético open their LALIGA season at home to Málaga CF on Aug. 19, serious questions still remain over the strength of the squad, particularly in the striker department. The front end of the team could soon be looking rather thin.
Even someone living under a rock, with their head in the sand, on the most remote island in the world, must have heard that there has been some news regarding Julián Alvarez this summer. He may not be joining FC Barcelona or Real Madrid, but that doesn’t mean to say he’s not going somewhere else.
La Araña certainly wants to leave Madrid, that’s been made clear. But the longer this painful saga drags on, the less time Atleti will be left with to find an appropriate solution.
As well as Alvarez, his strike partner Alexander Sørloth is also heavily linked with a move away from the Metropolitano, as fans and people at the club still try to figure out if he’s any good or not. Various clubs in Italy appear interested, and he may be used as a way of securing Nico Gonzalez’s permanent move from Juventus. Beşiktaş in Türkiye are also linked, which would take him back to a country where he blew up for a season at Trabzonspor.
Oh, and Antoine Griezmann also left.
Initially, the potential departures of Alvarez and Sørloth may be received positively. But fans quickly will realise that a 93-goal hole from the last two seasons will be left gaping at the top of the team. How on earth will Simeone replace that?
This is a question we have already seen El Cholo try to answer in his preseason training sessions.
Ademola Lookman was tried as a second striker occasionally toward the back end of last campaign, and his minutes in that position are expected to increase this season. Simeone certainly sees Lookman as a starter and believes he has the ability in front of goal. Not wanting to stick my neck out too much against something a professional football manager has said, but personally I don’t see it. He’s exciting, yes, he possesses on-the-ball skills that a mere mortal such as myself would only dream of, yes. But to be knocking in as many goals as Sørloth and Alvarez, a more clinical finisher is needed. After all, he is still the guy from that panenka penalty back in his Fulham days.
Could the contundencia that Simeone always mentions come from the B team?
Fernando Torres’ Atlético Madrileño boasted the top goalscorer across the whole of the third tier last season in Arnau Ortiz. He bagged 23 goals in the league, mainly coming from the left side of attack, as the team fell short of promotion. However, the leap to LALIGA might just be too big and too late for the 24-year-old. The highest level Ortiz has played is the second division, and he’s only done that 23 times. The only example I can think of in terms of a similar jump is that of Isaac Romero at Sevilla, but he isn’t exactly pulling up trees anymore.
Miguel Cubo is frequently being used at striker in preseason training, but would Simeone really go into a season with another of Torres’ boys leading the line? It was nice to see the amount of players from the youth setup brought in toward the latter stages of the last league season, when the squad was going strong in two cup competitions, but it’s not usually a prerogative of Simeone’s to have that much faith in youth from August.
The only option left would be to head into the market, where Dusan Vlahović currently sits unassociated with a club. He’d be the third player this summer that Atleti would sign after years of interest — and after failing to grab them at their peak.
Now unfavourable to Juventus, and everyone else seemingly, Vlahović would be a risk, but someone who I doubt Simeone would refuse seeing as the Serbian is still only 26. He’s been in Italy for enough years to speak the language in which Simeone would communicate with him, but it would have to be more than a common language to get a tune out of him again. Vlahović has seemingly lost his goalscoring touch that made him so sought after by Atleti at Fiorentina in the first place.
Also on the market, according to some reporting, is Viktor Gyökeres — who would act as a facilitator to allow Alvarez to be sold to Arsenal. I have a few friends of a Gunner persuasion, and from their opinions so ferociously voiced, I feel Atleti would be left short-changed if the two were to swap capital cities. After years of Sørloth and Álvaro Morata, the last thing that colchoneros need is another misfiring striker who turns pale as a sheet at the first sniff of losing confidence in front of goal.
Whoever is sold, signed or kept, when looking at the history of Atlético teams that have done well under Diego Simeone, a standout striker has always been the overpowering flavour of the dish. It hasn’t ever been in El Cholo‘s wheelhouse to lead a team where the goals are distributed throughout the whole pitch.
However, my biggest concern at the moment is who will be the one to lead Atlético Madrid out of this mess: someone at the club needs to take control of the situation.
Decisions clearly have to be Apollo-approved; Miguel Ángel Gil Marín is wading in with protagonist interviews; Mateu Alemany is supposed to be doing this job; Simeone has spent more time in New York than Lady Liberty herself; and Enrique Cerezo is still getting drunk with microphones in front of him.
I hate to be the one to induce a sense of doom and gloom when a ball has yet to be kicked, but Atleti have a long way to go if they want to have a serious shot of winning anything in 2026/27. At this rate, Champions League qualification may be a realistic objective.
Take me back to Aug. 17, 2025. Thirty-seven minutes on the clock, Alvarez standing over a free-kick. It’s curled beautifully into the top corner, I turn to my brother in our tiny Air BnB on the outskirts of Santander and say, “we’re going to win the league.” Seems so long ago.
