Atlético Madrid put on a fantastic second half display to win the Madrid derby at the Metropolitano on Sunday afternoon.
After a cagey first 45 minutes that contained very little football, but a whole lot of spice, the match turned on its head when Dean Huijsen conceded a penalty by bringing down Giuliano Simeone in the box. As the last man with no intent to play the ball, the defender was given his marching orders, and Alejandro Grimaldo converted from the spot.
Six minutes later, Jonathan David scored
for the third consecutive game, and Atleti looked to be cruising to an unfamiliarly-relaxed derby win. However, with a minute of normal time remaining, Antonio Rüdiger headed the visitors back in the game, and the 70,000 inside the stadium were treated to a nervous ending.
Atleti held on to record another home win in LALIGA against their fierce rivals; this was the third season in the last four that Diego Simeone’s side has won the Madrid derby at the Metropolitano.
Here are Into the Calderón’s key takeaways from this one.
Koke.
It almost doesn’t require an explanation anymore; the world is running out of ways to define his brilliance.
Koke’s longevity at Atleti had its moment of brief virality this week as he surpassed Sir Bobby Charlton’s 746 games for a single club, leaving only seven one-club men ahead of him in the history of football in terms of matches played. The world perked up for a moment and various international outlets shared a graphic made by Transfermarkt, but to truly appreciate the significance of his lasting presence in the Atlético Madrid team, the second half of today’s match is a must watch.
Before the arrival of Johnny Cardoso (and now Morten Hjulmand), Koke was needed as the anchor at the base of midfield to break up opposition attacks and to keep the ball ticking along. Whilst he was still very good in that role, it denied him the chance to show his abilities further up the pitch. Now with a reliable set of pivots who can play behind him, he’s coming onto the pitch to lead the press, run between the opposition midfield and defensive lines when in possession, with the freedom to be another general nuisance going forward.
It may be too simplistic and opportunistic to put the result solely down to his introduction at half time, but the correlation is becoming too strong to ignore. Koke may be aging, but his partnership in the middle with Cardoso is strengthening, and the Gabi-Tiago vibes are coming through real strong. In particular, the way he is able to support whichever attacking player is on the ball by being an option for them (like a rugby scrum half), really stood out today.
Iceman in full flow
Remarkably, the last time an Atlético Madrid player scored in all of their first three matches for the club was in 1995. That was the year when the man who achieved this feat, Lyuboslav Penev, finished as the club’s top scorer in a league and cup double-winning season. While matching that success seems unrealistic this campaign, Jonathan David is making a big impression in LALIGA, following his loan move from Juventus on the last day of the transfer window.
He is currently working off a ratio of one goal every 53 minutes, and is showing movement and finishing inside the box that Atleti have been missing for a number of years. He’s a classic number nine, different to Julián Alvarez in that sense, and has more ability with his feet than Alexander Sørloth. The difference in goal tallies between all three might turn out to be negligible, but the goals David scores seem to be done in a slightly different way.
Any football player who plays for one of the top five teams in Europe is seriously talented, with their success often based off how they feel within the environment they play in. There were concerns (hands up) when he signed due to the unimpressive spell he had at Juventus, but so far David has taken to life in Madrid like a fish to water.
Long may he continue to score.
Immense Giuliano
Nepotism can only be claimed if the person in question doesn’t deserve to be in the position they are, right? So for anyone attributing Giuliano’s continued presence in the starting lineups of his father’s to the blood they share is quite frankly wrong.
It’s true he has his bad days, and sometimes it takes the motivation of playing a Madrid derby in front of 70,000 people to release some player’s good matches. But Giuliano was vital to Atleti’s success today, and they couldn’t have done it without him.
The long balls over the top for him to run on to worked really well last season, and Dávid Hancko’s pinpoint pass accuracy was seen once more in the action that led to the red card and penalty. Players who choose to stop Giuliano as lackadaisically as Huijsen will get punished, and this moment turned the match on its head, regardless of how the balance of the match was before.
In the second goal, it was a different, improved facet of his game that he showed when he whipped an inch-perfect cross across the opposition penalty area for David to convert. His end product has been called into question over the years, and there are times that he fails to convince, but when it mattered most in the match that matters most to the Atleti fans, Cholito delivered.
His final, and perhaps most important, intervention of the day came right at the very end, when it was he who wrestled Kylian Mbappé off the ball to deny the Frenchman from potentially snatching a late equaliser.
Especially when fighting a two-goal deficit, it felt surprising that today’s opponents failed to offer any real offensive threat. Full-backs Marc Cucurella and Denzel Dumfries were notably quiet, with the former’s ineffectiveness being attributed to how much a constant thorn Giuliano was in his side. It goes to show the disparity in level between the left-back’s current club side, and the World Cup-winning team Cucurella was a part of that kept Giuliano largely quiet in July.
A deserving MVP.
Simeone doesn’t know his best team yet
The construction of the Atlético Madrid team being carried out by Simeone is suitably very Spanish in the sense that it’s taking a lot longer (and costing a lot more) than initially thought.
Whatever he was intending to do with today’s starting lineup didn’t work, full stop. The players looked as confused as we were with who was meant to be playing where; the team was crying out for order. Giuliano, Marcos Llorente and Marc Pubill all played at right-back at one point or another, with Kang-in Lee and Álex Baena (the supposed left-midfielder) gravitating over to that side of the pitch.
Initially I thought it was because that was the only part of the pitch where the sun was shining, before remembering it was 31°C in Madrid earlier. Although I suspect that had at least something to do with why Llorente was straying away from the middle of the pitch.
When Koke was introduced and Llorente became the obvious right-back, only then was it possible to determine all eleven players’ positions as the 4-3-3 came into view. Let’s see if El Cholo will decide to become pragmatic, or continue to be enigmatic.
