Stefan Savic Has Much to Do to Displace Jose Gimenez in Atletico Madrid Defence

Atletico Madrid's loss on penalties in the UEFA Champions League final saw questions of manager Diego Simeone's future dominate the postgame talk and analysis, leaving one particular part of Cholo's named XI largely overlooked: the inclusion of Stefan Savic at centre-back, chosen ahead of regular first choice Jose Gimenez.

While the rest of the XI could basically have been written out a week before kick-off, Simeone trained in the buildup using all three of his central defenders—stalwart Diego Godin being the other—and eventually plumped for the Montenegrin to partner Godin, to the surprise of some.

Savic performed to the same level as most of his team-mates, and no questions were asked of him in a negative sense postgame. But despite playing the biggest match of the season for Los Rojiblancos, he still has a lot to do to displace Gimenez on a regular basis.

Champions League final

Atletico started the match in strangely subservient mood defensively, particularly off set pieces. Both Godin and Savic were beaten aerially as Real Madrid exerted authority on the ground and in the air from a succession of quickly taken free-kicks and good corner deliveries, while the marking inside the area was far from the tight and unified effort it usually would have been.

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It would be beyond harsh to attribute this solely to Savic, as the entire midfield structure also seemed off-balance in the early stages, but soon after the first half-hour of the match, it became apparent why Simeone had opted to pick him.

Savic's recovery pace is good, and against the counter-attack threat of Real Madrid, he was called into action with more agility than Gimenez can perhaps muster. In possession, he is calm and plays simply into the midfield line, not dissimilar to Gimenez, if with less attempted invention, but perhaps the biggest deciding factor was balancing aggression with cool heads.

Gimenez would put his body on the line in any given moment for the Atletico cause, but with so much at stake, perhaps a measure of more controlled defensive work was what the boss sought.

2015-16

Savic was good, without standing out, over the 120 minutes in Milan—which by and large mirrored his season as a whole.

A third choice from season's start, he had to wait his opportunity, and game time in La Liga came infrequently for Savic. He made just one appearance in the first 10 games and never managed three successive starts in league play.

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Considering a lack of consistent game time, his performances were impressively consistent, and there were no major faults in his game which could be looked at for costing Atletico points. Indeed, from his 10 league starts, they lost only one, the penultimate game of the season, and conceded only once from his four Champions League starts prior to the final itself.

Savic fit in well during his debut season, even if he didn't see as much game time as he would have liked, but merely doing well is not cause for displacing one of Europe's best defenders, who himself had to be consistently superb to finally edge Miranda out of the team 15 months ago.

Simeone

Simeone puts an awful lot of stock in building partnerships in his Atletico Madrid team. The midfield pairing of Gabi and Tiago took a broken leg to break up, established pairings down the flank are continually turned to when altering tactics or personnel and those in form tend to stay in the team.

The boss trusts those who show consistently they can implement his tactics and show the work rate he desires, not rotating needlessly or without reason. He prefers to leave the starting shirts to the players in possession until form or fitness dictate they should be replaced.

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It made his decision to swap Savic for Gimenez in the final itself all the more perplexing—but, size of the game aside, this was just one match. It was Gimenez who started both legs of the semis against Bayern Munich (one alongside Savic), Gimenez who was brought back into the XI at the end of the season as they fought for La Liga and the same Uruguayan who has been an enormous part of Atleti's defensive success all season long.

There's no reason to think he has suddenly discarded or demoted one of the game's best young central defenders, and the expectation would be that next term, Savic has yet more work to do in terms of his consistency and raising his performance level, offering something Gimenez does not, to win a regular spot.

Progression?

That's not to say Savic won't be hoping for more than the 1,855 minutes of game time he managed this season—far less than the 3,200 for Gimenez or Godin's 4,000. All three should get plenty of action, with Atletico likely to go all-in during the summer transfer window in a bid to finally claim Europe's biggest title or win back La Liga.

Simeone knows he needs depth in defence just as much as in midfield, as the spate of injuries toward the end of the season showed.

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Having enjoyed a settled back line all year long, Simeone suddenly found himself with Godin suffering a hamstring strain, Gimenez with both hamstring and Achilles problems and Savic also with a hamstring issue. Young centre-back Lucas Hernandez filled in admirably, and Saul Niguez had to be used as an emergency option.

Although it was bad timing for all three seniors to be out at once, it showcases the need to have multiple performers who can play to the same level.

Savic has clearly impressed Simeone with his attitude as well as defensive strengths, or he'd have been sidelined in the way Luciano Vietto has been, Jackson Martinez was and Oliver Torres is battling against.

It's a sign of confidence in the defender ahead of next year, but that's all it is. Every year, every one of Cholo's players has to earn the right to feature with regularity, and Savic can expect his battle to begin from the same place again in 2016-17: the bench. 

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