Thirteen minutes can be a lifetime. Thirteen minutes is the time that passed between Arsenal’s first goal and fourth. Between a worthy match in which Atlético climbed on Julián’s back so that the Argentine could take him to take something from the Emirates Stadium and the tragedy.
A drama that came without warning. While Atlético was getting its hopes up for a draw that never came, Arsenal’s goals were falling. While Simeone’s team was encouraged by what Julián might be able to do, Declan Rice I was looking for the head of Gabriel to mark the path of the victory.
He was in everything Arsenal’s Brazilian centre-back. He scored the first by heading a free kick from Rice without any Atlético defender being able to stop it. Rice put the ball on his teammate’s head again from a corner, which was an intermediate pass for Gyokeres to score Arsenal’s fourth. In between, he had had time to deflect a shot from Giuliano that looked like a tie.
The names are repeated, the movements too, but Atlético was not able to contain them. Nor to Zubimendi, who was at the origin of everything. The Spanish midfielder moved the team with precision, each ball arriving in its place at the right time. Like the pass that put Lewis Skelly deep and with his left foot so that the full-back put the ball in the area. There between Eze and Gyokeres They managed to get the Swede to score what was his team’s third.
The forward who arrived this year from Sporting de Portugal is not flashy, but he is effective. The finisher that Arteta’s team needed to transform that visually pleasing football that helped them reach the edge of all the great titles, into a steamroller.
Atlético did not expect that forcefulness and went to look for the tie after Gabriel’s goal. Courageously, without looking back. Simeone also made three changes at the same time to bring his team closer to the opponent’s area. He did it, with the help of Julián, above all, a tremendous footballer who is diluted on days like this by an unexpected victory. What Simeone achieved, too, is to leave spaces behind him that Arsenal always knew how to take advantage of.
When Atlético pushed harder to reach the tie, the second goal arrivedMartinelli’s. That was the blow that sent Atlético to the canvas and without the ability to recover.
Not just because of the goals. It was difficult for Atlético to understand that, suddenly, they were out of the game. That hour of the game in which he had supported Arsenal came to nothing in just seven minutes of inspiration. The statistics said at that point that Atlético had not shot between the three sticks. But the truth is that Julián Álvarez had responded to Eze’s shot that hit Hancko and hit the crossbar with a shot that sought the corner of the goal and hit the woodwork.
The Argentine had also been close to scoring a left-footed corner shot with Raya outside the goal, but he narrowly missed it. And his was the pass to Giuliano that was close to scoring a 1-1 tie.
It didn’t take long to arrive Martinelli’s second that left Atlético knocked outwith that feeling of not knowing where the truck that had just hit him had come from. A feeling that grew with Arsenal’s goals.
Atlético returns to the doubts of the beginning of the season, when nothing seemed to work. Their only certainty is Julián Álvarez, but it is not enough when it comes to getting out of a black hole. A hole that was generated in less than a quarter of an hour.