Yannick Carrasco's Fine Atletico Madrid Form Rewards Diego Simeone for Changing
If the new Atletico Madrid mantra in La Liga is to score goals, then it is very much “same old, same old” in the Champions League.
Three games, three wins, all by one goal to nil. It is pretty standard Atletico stuff, and on Wednesday night it was the Russian side Rostov who were on the receiving end of it.
Yannick Carrasco—the scorer of a hat-trick in the league at the weekend and the winner in Atletico’s previous Champions League game against Bayern Munich—was the hero once again, popping up just after the hour mark to turn what had been a comfortable evening into an advantage on the scoresheet.
And it was an advantage Atletico held on to thanks to their strong and familiar defence.
Manager Diego Simeone might have made alterations to his team elsewhere—starting with Fernando Torres over Kevin Gameiro, and then introducing the French forward in place of Angel Correa shortly before the goal as Atletico went with three up top—but still he sticks by what has become a tried and tested rearguard.
Goalkeeper Jan Oblak and the back four of Filipe Luis, Stefan Savic, Diego Godin and Juanfran have now all played in almost every minute of the Champions League run so far, with the only alteration seeing Jose Gimenez come in for Savic in the opener at PSV Eindhoven. He gave away a penalty, but Oblak saved it anyway.
That is now 270 minutes without conceding a goal in this season’s Champions League, the sturdiest of foundations and the sort of thing upon which great successes can be built.
There may come a time in the season when Simeone has to wonder just where this competition fits into his list of priorities.
Atletico are, after all, sitting on the top of the Liga table. They’ve made a brighter start to the campaign than looked possible after the first couple of games, and for all of Barcelona and Real Madrid’s often mesmerising brilliance, they are the team which looks the most convincing in Spain.
It might be that the league title is the thing which needs to be prioritised later in the campaign, but that doesn’t necessarily need to be the case now.
As we discussed before this trip to Russia, a win was actually going to help in the league challenge even though they are different competitions. With nine points from nine available and a further nine left to play for, Atletico are as good as in the knockout stages. Players can be rested for the challenges ahead in this competition.
And that seemed to be uppermost in the mind of Simeone after the game in Russia, where it didn’t take him long to bring up the subject of a tricky game at Sevilla in the league on Sunday.
“The team is already thinking about Sevilla,” the manager said, per Atletico’s official website before elaborating on the game when he added:
“Rostov is a team that is very good at taking advantage of its rival’s mistakes. It plays with both forwards very close to the centre-backs and they defend very well close to their area.
"We knew how the rival played. We had chances to open the score, but we weren’t able to finish them. In the second half, we scored from one of the many chances we created.”
And that, you felt, was that.
Simeone knew that his team had a job to do in Russia, and that job required three stages; stop the opposition from scoring, score one yourself and then protect the lead.
It might sound like an overly negative game plan, or the type of thing which hasn’t exactly won Atletico a huge amount of fans among neutrals during the Simeone era, but it isn’t anything to be ashamed of.
This was the archetypal “job done” kind of victory, but because of everything that lies ahead for the club in the next few days, weeks and months, it is one that will probably be swiftly forgotten by fans already looking forward.
One thing that can’t be forgotten, though, is the fine form of Carrasco at the moment, as the Belgian continues to prove a menacing, goalscoring threat around the opposition penalty area.
Where he has thrived is a fine example of Simeone’s decision to loosen the leash on his team, as the manager’s desire to get extra players into the area has led to more chances falling to the feet of the advanced midfield player.
In praising Carrasco for Unibet this week, Spanish football writer Dermot Corrigan recounted Simeone’s quotes from the weekend win over Granada.
The Atleti boss said: “I am very happy for [Carrasco]. It is a daily battle with him, to get him to what you saw in this game. He is a very complete player, with great potential, he wants to improve and he listens, he scores goals, beats people with the ball.”
And you almost wonder if that “daily battle” Simeone refers to isn’t so much about the manager and the player's own inconsistency, but more the manager learning how best to utilise such a talent day by day.
Simeone has always had clear, direct attackers in his Atletico teams such as Radamel Falcao, Diego Costa, Antoine Griezmann or Torres, and then the majority of the midfielders behind those players always had their specific jobs to do.
Even someone like Arda Turan—such a hugely influential player in the Simeone team which won the 2013/14 league title and reached the final of the Champions League—had his defensive responsibilities drummed into him. Carrasco will have some too, but it seems different with him.
He seems to have been granted a kind of roving attacking role by his manager, arguably the first time he has thrust that upon a midfield player who is positioned behind two main strikers in the team.
Carrasco might well have become Simeone’s great project, or the player who has catapulted himself from a useful squad member in his first season at the club last year into a guaranteed starter—and a guaranteed scorer at the moment.
When you have these players in your team, you are suddenly a much greater goal threat than you were before.
It is one of those instances when the game of football, with all its myriad of tactical and technical possibilities, suddenly becomes staggeringly simple. If you get more players in the box, close to the opposition goal, then more goals will be scored.
Carrasco is the extra man at the moment, and how Atletico are benefitting.
The win at Rostov might not last long in the memory, but it was a crucial one for its impact on what lies ahead in what is shaping up to be a hugely exciting season.
Even if those who think a succession of 1-0 wins means that we’re watching the same old Atletico.
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