Giuliano Simeone suddenly woke up his team and all the spectators from their nap. He is always involved in the game and Oblak knows it. After catching a ball, the Atlético goalkeeper raised his head and saw the youth player’s run, who took advantage of Maffeo’s stubbornness, who preferred to go and cover him instead of running for the ball, to get him out of the way and give the only goal of the game to Julián Álvarez. He only had to push her because Greif had gone out to cover Giuliano.
The goal sums up what Atlético was in the game. Oblak and little Simeone were the tables that the red and white players clung to to take the victory at Son Moix. Giuliano gives the team the rhythm it lacks. He always has one more speed than the rest and one more point of attention. And Oblak was right in the first half with a header from Larin when it seemed that the two teams had signed a non-aggression pact and at the end of the game with a shot from Abdón Pratas that could have earned the tie.
There wasn’t much else from Atlético, who have become accustomed to winning without having the ball or chanceswithout doing anything worthy of appearing in a summary of the game. And he had luck on his side when Sánchez Martínez decided not to show the second yellow card to Lenglet for a grab on Larin that should have earned him the second yellow card when the game was still tied at zero.
Simeone has decided that the first thing is defense, recovering the essence of his beginningswhen the team grew from back to front. And if he doesn’t do it for security and placement, he does it for accumulation. And almost always ends up defending with six, with Giuliano and Riquelme doubling the side so that Molina and Reinildo can get inside.
Simeone feels safer with many players in front of his goalkeeper. The match against Lille, in which Atlético had chances to score in the first half and ended up losing, seems to have convinced the Argentine coach that he should return to his origins, when he looked more backwards than forwards.
El Cholo puts a wall in front of Oblak as he has done so many times and at the same time he nullifies the rival he exhausts his team’s creative possibilities. The full-backs have to travel the world and the forwards are left isolated. An effect that is multiplied by Antoine Griezmann’s poor form.
The Frenchman is not going through his best moment and was substituted in the second half, something that is no longer strange. Sometimes he appears to give a goal pass that changes a game, as happened in Paris against PSG, but he has become an inconsequential player.
Atlético has changed Griezmann’s criteria due to the drive of the youngest of the Simeone family and his goals for those of Julián Álvarez. The Argentine has found the goal in recent games and seems increasingly comfortable in Cholo’s team. He has four in the League, seven in total this season.
Although that did not save him from being substituted immediately after the goal. Simeone made four changes at once, including his son Giuliano, who was not enough to have decided the game with a run either.
His success has already helped Atlético finish several games. The red and white team needs Argentine blood, which seems to depend in recent times on the success of Correa, Giuliano and Julián. They have saved their team in recent times.
Atlético adds wins, but its games count as hours of sleep. They are a perfect diet against insomnia. They put them to sleep and, even if the rival makes some merit to win, or at least to draw, as Mallorca did, they end up neutralizing them.
Everything starts in Oblak and ends in Giuliano. But that doesn’t seem to be enough to last the season.